King starts the story with Mary and Ray Burkett arguing about their dying lawn. They are going to Wal-Mart in order to purchase grass feed so Ray can fix their lawn, to his utter disgust. Not only is Mary complaining to him about their hideous lawn, but she also scolds him for his smoking habits. Ray counters her argument about his health and retorts with how her obesity is unhealthy. Mary remembers her nieces birthday, and she decides to stop by a convenience store to pick up a last-minute gift. Ray stays in the car with his dog, Biznezz, while Mary goes into a convenience store to purchase a ball for their niece. Ray is in an aggravated mood due to the multiple things in his life that all point to him being a failure: an unhappy relationship, a fat wife, and the fact that he lives in an ugly house. He is brought back to reality when an employee from the convenience store knocks on his car window. The store employee informs Ray that his wife, Mary, has suffered a heart attack and died. He enters the store and waits for the doctors to pronounce her dead as she lay lifeless on the floor. She dies. Ray then meanders around with the store clerks and bystanders. Some of which linger around the scene of her death in complete shock. Ray is engulfed in the idea that maybe one of the people who witnessed the tragedy will fornicate with him out of mercy. After about two hours of strolling around the store aimlessly, Ray seems to remember his wife has died. Ray is secretly excited deep inside because he can now smoke freely as
his heart desires. To cap off a series of disturbing events, King ends the story with Ray returning to his car to find his dog dead with the remnants of a snow cone in his whiskers.
There are many alarming facets of this story that can be further analyzed, but it is appropriate to first start with the general storyline itself. Ray and Mary Burkett suffer from unhappy relationships just as a shocking percentage of couples in America do. According to a recent study, this trend of unhappy marriages is shockingly high. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago constructed a study two years ago to gauge the percentage of unhappily married couples. They reported that a shocking 65% of couples complained about not being happy in their relationship. This statistic is a disturbing fact for readers; it makes them think about their relationships. If readers are not married, it encourages them to have second thoughts about getting married, can anyone blame them? Why would one want to engage in a marriage where the majority of the married population states that they are not happy in their marriage? For the readers that are married, it makes them reflect on their marriage and maybe second-guess it. Divorce leads to broken families, which have proven to be a hardship during a childs developmental stage. All of which lead to chaos in society. Stephen King is one of todays most successful writers because of his ability to intertwine current problems, like unhappiness in marriages, with his far-out story plots.