Dreamcatcher

comes to relationships, Pete drinks too much (way too much is what Henry thinks), Jonesy and Carla have had a near-miss with divorce, and Henry is now struggling with a
depression that seems to him every bit as seductive as it does unpleasant. So yes, they have their problems. But together they are still good, still able to light it up, and by tomorrow night they will be together. For eight days, this year. That’s good.

“I know I shouldn’t, but I just get this
compulsion
early in the morning. Maybe it’s low blood sugar, I think it might be that. Anyway, I ate the rest of the pound-cake that was
in the fridge, then I got in the car and drove down to Dunkin” Donuts and I got a dozen of
the Dutch Apple and four or-”
Henry, still thinking about the annual hunting trip that starts tomorrow, isn’t aware of

what he is saying until it is out. “maybe this compulsive eating, Barry, maybe it has something to do with thinking you killed your mother. Do you think that’s possible?”
Barry’s words stop. Henry looks up and sees Barry Newman staring at him with eyes
so wide they are actually visible. And although Henry knows he should stop-he has no business doing this at
all
, it has absolutely nothing to do with therapy-he doesn’t
want

to stop. Some of this may have to do with thinking about his old friends, but most of it is just
seeing that shocked look on Barry’s face, and the pallor of his cheek. What really bugs Henry about Barry, he supposes, is Barry’s complacency. His inner assurance that there is
no need to change his self-destructive behavior, let alone search for its roots.
“You
do
think you killed her, don’t you?” Henry asks. He speaks casually, almost lightly.
“I-I never-I resent-”

“She called and she called, said she was having chest-pains, but of course she said that often, didn’t she? Every other week. Every other
day
, it sometimes seemed. Calling downstairs to you. “Barry, phone Dr Withers. Barry, call an ambulance. Barry, dial 911.””
They have never talked about Barry’s parents. In his soft, fat, implacable way, Barry
will not allow it. He will begin to discuss them-or seem to-and then bingo, he’ll be talking

about roast lamb again, or roast chicken, or roast duck with orange sauce. Back to the inventory. Hence Henry knows nothing about Barry’s parents, certainly not about the day
Barry’s mother died, falling out of bed and pissing on the carpet, still calling and calling,
three hundred pounds and so disgustingly fat, calling and calling. He can know nothing about that because he hasn’t been told, but he
does

know. And Barry was thinner then. A relatively svelte one-ninety.
This is Henry’s version of the line. Seeing the line. Henry hasn’t seen it for maybe five years now (unless he sometimes sees it in dreams), thought all that was over, and now
here it is again.

“You sat there in front of the TV, listening to her yell,” he says. “You sat there watching Ricky Lake and eating-what?-a Sara Lee cheesecake? A bowl of ice cream? I don’t know. But you let her yell.”
“Stop it!”
“You let her yell, and really, why not?
She’d been crying wolf her whole life
. You are

not a stupid man and you know that’s true. This sort of thing happens. I think you know that, too. You’ve cast yourself in your own little Tennessee Williams play simply because
you like to eat. But guess what, Barry?
It’s really going to kill you
. In your secret heart you don’t believe that, but it’s true. Your heart’s already beating like a premature burial victim
beating his fists on the lid of a coffin. What’s it going to be like eighty or a hundred pounds from now?”

“Shut-”
“When you fall, Barry, it’s going to be like the fall of Babel in the desert. The people
who see you go down will talk about it for
years
. Man, you’ll shake the dishes right off the shelves-”
“
Stop it!
” Barry is sitting up now, he hasn’t needed Henry to give him a hand this time, and he is deadly pale except for little red roses, one growing in each check.
“-you’ll splash the coffee right out of the cups, and you’ll piss yourself just like she
did-”
“
STOP IT!

” Barry Newman shrieks. “
STOP IT, YOU MONSTER!
”
But Henry can’t. Henry can’t. He sees the line and when you see it, you can’t unsee
it.
“-unless you wake up from this poisoned dream you’re having. You see, Barry-”
But Barry doesn’t want to see, absolutely will
not
see. Out the door he runs, vast buttocks
jiggling, and he is gone.At first Henry sits where he is, not moving, listening to the

departing thunder of the one-man buffalo herd that is Barry Newman.The outer room is empty; he has no receptionist, and with Barry gone, the week is over. Just as
well. That was a mess. He goes to the couch and lies down on it.
“Doctor,” he says, “I just fucked up. “How did you do that, Henry?
“I told a patient the truth.
“lf we know the truth, Henry, does it not set us free?
“No,” he replies to himself, looking up at the ceiling. “Not in the slightest.
“Close your eyes, Henry.

“All right, doctor.”
He closes his eyes. The room is replaced by darkness, and that is good. Darkness has
become his friend. Tomorrow he will see his other friends (three of them, anyway), and the light will once more seem good. But now… now…
“Doctor?
“Yes, Henry.
“This is a bona fide case of same shit, different day. Do you know that?
“What does that mean, Henry? What does that mean to you?

“Everything,” he says, eyes closed, and then adds: “Nothing.” But that’s a lie. Not the first one that was ever told in here.He lies on the couch, eyes closed and hands folded on
his chest, and after a little while he sleeps.
The next day the four of them drive up to Hole in the Wall, and it is a great eight days. The great hunting trips are coming to an end, only a few left, although they of course

do not know this. The real darkness is still a few years away, but it is coming.
The darkness is coming.
2001: JONESY’S STUDENT-TEACHER
CONFERENCE
We don’t know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well. On the day
that will change his, Jonesy is in his third-floor John Jay College office, looking out at his
little slice of Boston and thinking how wrong T.S. Eliot had been to call April the cruelest

month just because an itinerant carpenter from Nazareth supposedly got himself crucified
then for fomenting rebellion. Anyone who lives in Boston knows that it’s March that’s the
cruelest, holding out a few clays of false hope and then gleefully hitting you with the shit.
Today is one of the untrustworthy ones when it looks as if spring might really be coming,

and he’s thinking about taking a walk when the bit of impending nastiness just ahead is over. Of course at this point, Jonesy has no idea how nasty a day can get; no idea that he is
going to finish this one in a hospital room, smashed up and fighting for his goddam life.
Same shit, different day

, he thinks, but this will be different shit indeed. That’s when the phone rings, and he grabs it at once, filled with a hopeful premonition: it’ll be the Defuniak kid, calling to cancel his eleven-o’clock.
He’s gotten a whiff of what’s in the
wind
,
Jonesy thinks, and that is very possible. Usually it’s the students who make
appointments to see the teacher. When a kid gets a message saying that one of his teachers
wants to see
him

… well, you don’t have to be a rocket-scientist, as the saying goes.
“Hello, it’s Jones,” he says.
“Hey, Jonesy, how’s life treating you?”
He’d know that voice anywhere. “Henry! Hey! Good, life’s good!”
Life does not, in fact, seem all that great, not with Defuniak due in a quarter of an hour, but it’s all relative, isn’t it? Compared to where he’s going to be twelve hours from
now, hooked up to all those beeping machines, one operation behind him and three more

ahead of him, Jonesy is, as they say, farting through silk.
“Glad to hear it.”
Jonesy might have heard the heaviness in Henry’s voice, but more likely it’s a thing
he senses.
“Henry? What’s wrong?”
Silence. Jonesy is about to ask again when Henry answers.
“A patient of mine died yesterday. I happened to see the obit in the paper. Barry Newman, his name was.” Henry pauses. “He was a couch man.”
Jonesy doesn’t know what that means, but his old friend is hurting. He knows that.

“Suicide?”
“Heart attack. At the age of twenty-nine. Dug his grave with his own fork and
spoon.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He hasn’t been my patient for almost three years. I scared him away. I had one of
those things. Do you know what I’m talking about?” Jonesy thinks he does. “Was it the line?‘Henry sighs. It doesn’t sound like regret to Jonesy. It sounds like relief “Yeah. I kind
of socked it to him. He took off like his ass was on fire.”

“That doesn’t make you responsible for his coronary.”
“Maybe you’re right. But that’s not the way it feels.” A pause. And then, with a shade
of amusement: “Isn’t that a line from a Jim Croce song?
Are
you all right, Jonesy?” “Me?
Yeah. Why do you ask?” “I don’t know,” Henry says. “Only… I’ve been thinking about

you ever since I opened the paper and saw Barry’s picture on the obituary page. I want you to be careful.” Around his bones (many of which will soon be broken), Jonesy feels a
slight coldness. “What exactly are you talking about?” “I don’t know,” Henry says.
“Maybe nothing. But…”
“Is it the line
now?
” Jonesy is alarmed. He swings around in his chair and looks out
the window at the chancy spring sunlight. It crosses his mind that maybe the Defuniak kid

is disturbed, maybe he’s carrying a gun (
packing heat
, as they say in the mystery and suspense novels Jonesy likes to read in his spare time) and Henry has somehow picked this up.
“I don’t know. The most likely thing is that I’m just having a displaced reaction from
seeing Barry’s picture on the all-done page. But watch yourself the next little while, would
you?”
“Well… yeah. I can do that.”
“Good.”
“And you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”

But Jonesy doesn’t think Henry is fine at all. He’s about to say something else when
someone clears his throat behind him and he realizes that Defuniak has probably arrived.
“Well, that’s good,” he says, and swivels around in his chair. Yep, there’s his eleven-

o’clock in the doorway, not looking dangerous at all: just a kid bundled into a big old duffel coat that’s too heavy for the day, looking thin and underfed, wearing one earring and a punky haircut that spikes over his worried eyes. “Henry, I’ve got an appointment.
I’ll call you back-”
“No, that’s not necessary. Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am. But there’s one other thing. Got thirty more seconds?”

“Sure, you bet.” He holds up a finger to Defuniak and Defuniak nods. But he just goes on standing there until Jonesy points to the one chair in the little office besides his
own that isn’t stacked with books. Defuniak goes to it reluctantly. Into the phone, Jonesy
says, “Shoot.”
“I think we ought to go back to Derry. Just a quick trip, just you and me. See our old friend.”
“You mean-?” But he doesn’t want to say that name, that baby-sounding name, with a
stranger in the room.

He doesn’t have to; Henry says it for him. Once they were a quartet, then for a little
while they were five, and then they were four again. But the fifth one has never exactly
left them. Henry says that name, the name of a boy who is magically still a boy. About him, Henry’s worries are more clear, more easily expressed. It isn’t anything he knows, he
tells Jonesy, just a feeling that their old pal might need a visit.

“Have you talked to his mother?” Jonesy asked. “I think,” Henry says, “it might be
better if we just… you know, orbited on in there. How’s your calendar look for this weekend? Or the one after?” Jonesy doesn’t need to check. The weekend starts day after
tomorrow. There’s a faculty thing
Saturday afternoon, but he can easily get clear of that.
“I’m fine both days this weekend,” he says. “If I was to come by Saturday? At ten?”

“That’d be fine.” Henry sounds relieved, more like himself. Jonesy relaxes a little.
“You’re sure?”
“If you think we ought to go see…” Jonesy hesitates. “… see Douglas, then probably
we should. It’s been too long.”
“Your appointment’s there, isn’t he?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. I’ll look for you at ten on Saturday. Hey, maybe we’ll take the Scout. Give it a
run. How would that be?”
“That would be terrific.”
Henry laughs. “Carla still makin your lunch, Jonesy?”

“She is. “Jonesy looks toward his briefcase.
“What you got today? Tuna fish?”
“Egg salad.”
“Mmm-mmm. Okay, I’m out of here. SSDD, right?”
“SSDD,” Jonesy agrees. He can’t call their old friend by his right name in front of a
student, but SSDD is all right. “Talk to you I-”
“Arid take care of yourself
I mean it
.” The emphasis in Henry’s voice is

unmistakable, and a little scary. But before Jonesy can respond (and what he would say with Defuniak sitting in the corner, watching and listening, he doesn’t know), Henry is gone.
Jonesy looks at the phone thoughtfully for a moment, then hangs up. He flips a page
on his desk calendar, and on Saturday he crosses out
Drinks at Dean Jacobson’s house
and writes
Beg off-going to Derry with Henry to see D
. But this is an appointment he will not

keep. By Saturday, Derry and his old friends will be the furthest things from his mind.
Jonesy pulls in a deep breath, lets it out, and transfers his attention to his troublesome
eleven-o’clock. The kid shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He has a pretty good idea why
he’s been summoned here, Jonesy guesses.
“So, Mr Defuniak,” he says. “You’re from Maine, according to your records.”
“Uh, yeah. Pittsfield. I-”
“Your records also say that you’re here on scholarship, and that you’ve done well.”

The kid, he sees, is actually a lot more than worried. The kid is on the verge of tears.
Christ, but this is hard. Jonesy has never had to accuse a student of cheating before, but he
supposes this won’t be the last time. He only hopes it doesn’t happen too often. Because
this is hard, what Beaver would call a fuckarow.
“Mr Defuniak-David-do you know what happens to scholarships if the students
holding them are caught cheating? On a mid-term exam, let us say?”

The kid jerks as if a hidden prankster under his chair has just triggered a low-voltage
electrical charge into one of his skinny buttocks. Now his lips are trembling and the first
tear, oh God, there it goes down his unshaven boy’s cheek.
“I can tell you, “Jonesy says. “Such scholarships evaporate. That’s what happens to
them. Poof, and gone into thin air.”
There is a folder on Jonesy’s desk. He opens it and takes out a European History mid-

term, one of those multiple-choice monstrosities upon which the Department, in its great
unwisdom, insists. Written on top of this one, in the black strokes of an IBM pencil (“Make sure your marks are heavy and unbroken, and if you need to erase, erase
completely”), is the name DAVID DEFUNIAK.
“I’ve reviewed your course-work, David; I’ve re-scanned your paper on feudalism in

France during the middle ages; I’ve even been through your transcripts. You haven’t exhibited brilliance, but you’ve done okay. And I’m aware that you’re simply satisfying a
requirement here-your real interests don’t lie in my field, do they?”
Defuniak shakes his head mutely. The tears gleam on his cheeks in that untrustworthy
mid-March sunlight.
There’s a box of Kleenex on the comer of Jonesy’s desk, and he tosses it to the boy,

who catches it easily even in his distress. Good reflexes. When you’re nineteen, all your
wiring is still nice and tight, all your connections nice and solid.
Wait a few years, Mr Defuniak
, he thinks.
I’m only thirty-seven and already some of
my wires are getting loose
.
“Maybe you deserve another chance, “Jonesy says.
Slowly and deliberately, he begins to crumple Defuniak’s midterm, which is
suspiciously perfect, A-plus work, into a ball.

“Maybe what happened is you were sick the day of the mid-term, and you never took
it at all.”
“I
was
sick,” David Defuniak says eagerly. “I think I had the flu.”
“Then maybe I ought to give you a take-home essay instead of the multiple-choice
test to which your colleagues have been subjected. If you want it. To make up for the test
you missed. Would you want that?”
“Yeah,” the kid says, wiping his eyes madly with a large swatch of tissues. At least he

hasn’t gone through all that small-time cheapshit stuff about how Jonesy can’t prove it, can’t prove a thing, he’d take it to the Student Affairs Council, he’d call a protest, blah-blah-blahde-blah. He’s crying instead, which is uncomfortable to witness but probably a good sign-nineteen is young, but too many of them have lost most of their consciences by
the time they get there. Defuniak has pretty much owned up, which suggests there might

still be a man in there, waiting to come out. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
“And you understand that if anything like this ever happens again-”
“It won’t,” the kid says fervently. “It won’t, Professor Jones.” Although Jonesy is only an associate professor, he doesn’t bother to correct him. Someday, after all, he
will
be Professor Jones. He better be; he and his wife have a houseful of kids, and if there aren’t at

least a few salary-bumps in his future, life is apt to be a pretty tough scramble. They’ve
had some tough scrambles already.
“I hope not,” he says. “Give me three thousand words on the short-term results of the
Norman Conquest, David, all right? Cite sources but no need of footnotes. Keep it
informal, but present a cogent thesis. I want it by next Monday. Understood?”
“Yes. Yes, sir.”
“Then why don’t you go on and get started.” He points at Defuniak’s tatty footwear.

“And the next time you think of buying beer, buy some new sneakers instead. I wouldn’t
want you to catch the flu again.”
Defuniak goes to the door, then turns. He is anxious to be gone before Mr Jones
changes his mind, but he is also nineteen. And curious. “How did you know? You weren’t
even there that day. Some grad student proctored the test.”

“I knew, and that’s enough,” Jonesy says with some asperity. “Go on, son. Write a good paper. Hold onto your scholarship. I’m from Maine myself-Derry-and I know
Pittsfield. It’s a better place to be from than to go back to.”
“You got
that
right,” Defuniak says fervently. “Thank you. Thank you for giving
me
a chance.”
“Close the door on your way out.”
Defuniak-who will spend his sneaker-money not on beer but on a get-well bouquet

for Jonesy-goes out, obediently closing the door behind him. Jonesy swings around and looks out the window again. The sunshine is untrustworthy but enticing. And because the
Defuniak thing went better than he had expected, he thinks he wants to get out in that sunlight before more March clouds-and maybe snow-come rolling in. He has planned to eat in his office, but a new plan occurs to him. It is absolutely the worst plan of his life,

but of course Jonesy doesn’t know that. The plan is to grab his briefcase, pick up a copy of
the Boston
Phoenix
, and walk across the river to Cambridge. He’ll sit on a bench and eat
his egg salad sandwich in the sun.
He gets up to put Defuniak’s file in the cabinet marked D-F.
How did you know?
the
boy had asked, and Jonesy supposes that was a good question. An
excellent
question, really, The answer is this: he knew because… sometimes he
does

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