Meanwhile, Wanda asked Billy where he thought he was going.
Billy said back home to take a nap. She could go to the shit-fair on her own.
Wanda observed that he had almost hit those two old ladies (said old ladies now dropping behind fast; Nora Robichaud felt that, lacking some damned good reason, speeds over forty miles an hour were the devil's work).
Billy observed that Wanda both looked and sounded like her mother.
Wanda asked him to elucidate just what he meant by that.
Billy said that both mother and daughter had fat asses and tongues that were hung in the middle and ran on both ends.
Wanda told Billy he was hungover.
Billy told Wanda she was ugly.
It was a full and fair exchange of feelings, and by the time they crossed from Castle Rock into Motton, headed for an invisible barrier that had come into being not long after Wanda had opened this spirited discussion by saying it was a beautiful day, Billy was doing better than sixty, which was almost top end for Wanda's little Chevy shitbox.
'What's that smoke?' Wanda asked suddenly, pointing northeast, toward 119.
'I don't know,' he said. 'Did my mother-in-law fart?' This cracked him up and he started laughing.
Wanda Debec realized she had finally had enough. This clarified the world and her future in a way that was almost magical. She was turning to him, the words I want a divorce on the tip of her tongue, when they reached the Motton-Chester's Mill town line and struck the barrier. The Chevy shitbox was equipped with airbags, but Billy's did not deploy and Wanda's didn't pop out completely. The steering wheel collapsed Billy's chest; the steering column smashed his heart; he died almost instantly.
Wanda's head collided with the dashboard, and the sudden, catastrophic relocation of the Chevy's engine block broke one of her legs (the left) and one of her arms (the right). She was not aware of any pain, only that the horn was blaring, the car was suddenly askew in the middle of the road with its front end smashed almost flat, and her vision had come over all red.