Countdown: The Top 20 Stephen King Works of American Gothic Short Fiction--#20

First up on the Countdown (see yesterday's post for general intro):

#20. "Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)"

This brief Skeleton Crew story (which King culled, along with the companion piece, "Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game," from an aborted novel) packs some potent prose into its five pages.  The narrative opens with the scene of a bucolic neighborhood at daybreak--big maple trees, hopscotch-gridded sidewalks, sparrows sporting in birdbaths, a sky "already bluer than a baby's eye, and patched with guileless little fair-weather clouds...the ones baseball players called 'angels.'"  Such placidness, though, is soon disrupted by the rumble of a milk truck whose journey began somewhere back in the dark.  The vehicle proves to be a rolling nightmare, with a "bloodstained meathook" hanging from the roof of the cab, and a murky rear compartment rife with a "sunken, buggy smell."  And the driver himself is just as sinister.  You see, this milkman (the aptly-named Spike) is a madman, a human monster in a uniform.  Spike likes to give select customers on his route a little something extra...such as a live tarantula in the chocolate milk, acid gel in the all-purpose cream, and belladonna in the eggnog.

King's story is perhaps more surreal than logical (one would think that Spike's misdeeds could be traced back to him fairly easily), yet still chills.  In the conclusion, Spike steps inside a vacant, "crypt-cold" home on his route to observe what the reader must presume is the end result of his handiwork: "A huge splotch of drying blood covered part of one [living room] wall.  It looked like a psychiatrist's inkblot.  In the center of it a crater had been gouged deeply into the plaster.  There was a matted clump of hair in this crater, and a few splinters of bone."  Spike nods in approval of the grue, then exits and resumes his psychopathic route, convinced that "a fine day" is brightening all around.  Morning's normal glory is thus eclipsed, as King succeeds in thoroughly Gothicizing an idyllic American scene.

Milkmen might be obsolete figures in our modern world, but Spike Milligan's commitment to his craft won't be forgotten anytime soon.