Dreamcatcher

McCarthy steadied on his feet before either of them could take hold. Jonesy could have sworn that what he had taken for a middle-aged potbelly was almost gone. Was it
possible? Could the man have passed that much gas? He didn’t know. All he knew for sure
was that it had been a mighty fart and an even mightier belch, the sort of thing you could
yarn on for twenty years or more, starting off
We used to go up to Beaver Clarendon’s

camp the first week of hunting season every year, and one November-it was “01, the year
of the big fall storm-this fella wandered into camp…
Yes, it would make a good story, people would laugh about the big fart and the big burp, people always laughed at stories
about farts and burps. He wouldn’t tell the part about how he had come within eight ounces of press on a Garand’s trigger of taking McCarthy’s life, though. No, he wouldn’t
want to tell that part. Would he?

Pete and Henry were doubling, and so Beaver led McCarthy to the other downstairs
bedroom, the one Jonesy had been using. The Beav shot him a little apologetic look, and
Jonesy shrugged. It was the logical place, after all. Jonesy could double in with Beav tonight-Christ knew they’d done it enough as kids-and in truth, he wasn’t sure McCarthy
could have managed the stairs, anyway. He liked the man’s sweaty, leaden look less and
less.

Jonesy was the sort of man who made his bed and then buried it-books, papers,
clothes, bags, assorted toiletries. He swept all this off as quick as he could, then turned
back the coverlet. “You need to take a squirt, partner?” the Beav asked.
McCarthy shook his head. He seemed almost hypnotized by the clean blue sheet
Jonesy had uncovered. Jonesy was once again struck by how glassy the man’s eyes were.

Like the eyes of a stuffed trophy head. Suddenly and unbidden, he saw his living room back in Brookline, that upscale municipality next door to Boston. Braided rugs, early American furniture… and McCarthy’s head mounted over the fireplace.
Bagged that one
up in Maine
, he would tell his guests at cocktail parties.
Big bastard, dressed out at one-seventy
.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the Beav was looking at him with

something like alarm. “Twinge in the hip,” he said. “Sorry. Mr McCarthy-Rick-you’ll
want to take off your sweater and pants. Boots too, of course.
McCarthy looked around at him like a man roused from a dream. “Sure,” he said.
“You bet.”
“Need help?” Beaver asked.
“No, gosh no.” McCarthy looked alarmed or amused or both. “I’m not that far gone.”
“Then I’ll leave Jonesy to supervise.”

Beaver slipped out and McCarthy began to undress, starting by pulling his sweater
off over his head. Beneath it he wore a red-and-black hunter’s shirt, and beneath that a thermal undershirt. And yes, there was less gut poking out the front of that shirt, Jonesy
was sure of it.
Well…
almost
sure. Only an hour ago, he reminded himself, he had been sure McCarthy’s coat was the head of a deer.

McCarthy sat down in the chair beside the window to take off his shoes, and when he
did there was another fart-not as long as the first one, but just as loud and hoarse. Neither
of them commented on it, or the resulting smell, which was strong enough in the little room to make Jonesy’s eyes feel like watering.
McCarthy kicked his boots off-they made clunking sounds on the wooden floor-then
stood up and unbuckled his belt. As he pushed his blue jeans down, revealing the lower

half of his thermal underwear, the Beav came back in with a ceramic pot from upstairs. He
put it down by the head of the bed. “Just in case you have to, you know, urk. Or if you get
one of those collect calls you just have to take right away.”
McCarthy looked at him with a dullness Jonesy found alarming-a stranger in what
had been his bedroom, somehow ghostly in his baggy long underwear. An
ill
stranger. The question was just how ill.

“In case you can’t make the bathroom,” the Beav explained. “Which, by the way, is
close by. Just bang a left outside the bedroom door, but remember it’s the
second
door as you go along the wall, okay? If you forget and go in the first one, you’ll be taking a shit in
the linen closet.”
Jonesy was surprised into a laugh and didn’t care for the sound of it in the slightest-
high and slightly hysterical.

“I feel better now,” McCarthy said, but Jonesy detected absolutely zero sincerity in the man’s voice. And the guy just stood there in his underwear, like an android whose memory circuits have been about three-quarters erased. Before, he had shown some life, if
not exactly vivacity; now that was gone, like the color in his cheeks.
“Go on, Rick,” Beaver said quietly. “Lie down and catch some winks. Work on
getting your strength back.”

“Yes, okay.” He sat down on the freshly opened bed and looked out the window. His
eyes were wide and blank. Jonesy thought the smell in the room was dissipating, but perhaps he was just getting used to it, the way you got used to the smell of the monkeyhouse at the zoo if you stayed in there long enough. “Gosh, look at it snow.”
“Yeah,” Jonesy said. “How’s your stomach now?”
“Better.” McCarthy’s eyes moved to Jonesy’s face. They were the solemn eyes of a

frightened child. “I’m sorry about passing gas that way-I never did anything like that before, not even in the Army when it seemed like we ate beans every day-but I feel better.”

“Sure you don’t need to take a leak before you turn in?” Jonesy had four children, and this question came almost automatically. “No. I went in the woods just before you found me. Thank you for taking me in. Thank you both.” “Ah, hell,” Beaver said, and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “Anybody woulda.” “maybe,” McCarthy said. “And
maybe not. In the Bible it says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Outside, the wind

gusted more fiercely yet, making Hole in the Wall shake. Jonesy waited for McCarthy to
finish-it sounded as if he had more to say-but the man just swung his feet into bed and pulled the covers up.
From somewhere deep in Jonesy’s bed there came another of those long, rasping
farts, and Jonesy decided that was enough for him. It was one thing to let in a wayfaring
stranger when he came to your door just ahead of a storm; it was another to stand around

while he laid a series of gas-bombs.
The Beaver followed him out and closed the door gently behind him.
5
When Jonesy started to talk, the Beav shook his head, raised his finger to his lips, and
led Jonesy across the big room to the kitchen, which was as far as they could get from McCarthy without going into the shed out back.

“Man, that guy’s in a world of hurt,” Beaver said, and in the harsh glow of the kitchen’s fluorescent strips, Jonesy could see just how worried his old friend was. The Beav rummaged into the wide front pocket of his overalls, found a toothpick, and began to
nibble on it. In three minutes-the length of time it took a dedicated smoker to finish a cigarette-he would reduce it to a palmful of flax-fine splinters. Jonesy didn’t know how

the Beav’s teeth stood up to it (or his stomach), but he had been doing it his whole life.
“I hope you’re wrong, but…” Jonesy shook his head. “Did you ever smell anything
like those farts?”
“Nope,” Beaver said. “But there’s a lot more going on with that guy than just a bad
stomach.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he thinks it’s November eleventh, for one thing.”
Jonesy had no idea what the Beav was talking about. November eleventh was the day

their own hunting party had arrived, bundled into Henry’s Scout, as always.
“Beav, it’s Wednesday. It’s the
fourteenth
.”
Beaver nodded, smiling a little in spite of himself. The toothpick, which had already
picked up an appreciable warp, rolled from one side of his mouth to the other. “
I
know that.
You
know that. Rick, he don’t know that. Rick thinks it’s the Lord’s Day.”
“Beav, what exactly did he say to you?” Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been

much-it just didn’t take that long to scramble a couple of eggs and heat a can of soup. That
started a train of thought, and as Beaver talked, Jonesy ran water to do up the few dishes.
He didn’t mind camping out, but he was damned if he was going to live in squalor, as so
many men seemed willing to do when they left their homes and went into the woods.
“What he said was they came up on Saturday so they could hunt a little, then spend

Sunday working on the roof, which had a couple of leaks in it. He goes, “At least I didn’t
have to break the commandment about working on the Sabbath. When you’re lost in the
woods, the only thing you have to work on is not going crazy.””
“Huh,” Jonesy said.
“I guess I couldn’t swear in a court of law that he thinks this is the eleventh, but it’s
either that or go back a week further, to the fourth, because he sure does think it’s Sunday.
And I just can’t believe he’s been out there ten days.”

Jonesy couldn’t, either. But three? Yes. That he
could
believe. “It would explain something he told me,” Jonesy said. “He-”
The floor creaked and they both jumped a little, looking toward the closed bedroom
door on the other side of the big room, but there was nothing to see. And the floors and
walls were always creaking out here, even when the wind wasn’t blowing up high. They
looked at each other, a little shamefaced.

“Yeah, I’m jumpy,” Beaver said, perhaps reading Jonesy’s face, perhaps picking the
thought out of Jonesy’s mind. “Man, you have to admit it’s a little creepy, him turning up
right out of the woods like that.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“That fart sounded like he had something crammed up his butt that was dying of
smoke inhalation.”
The Beav looked a little surprised at that, as he always did when he said something

funny. They began laughing simultaneously, holding onto each other and doing it through open mouths, expelling the sounds as a series of harsh sighs, trying to keep it down, not
wanting the poor guy to hear them if he was still awake, hear and know they were laughing at him. Jonesy had a particularly hard time keeping it quiet because the release

was so necessary-it had a hysterical seventy to it and he doubled over, gasping and snorting, water running out of his eyes.
At last Beaver grabbed him and yanked him out the door. There they stood coatless in
the deepening snow, finally able to laugh out loud with the booming wind to cover the sounds they made.
6
When they went back in again, Jonesy’s hands were so numb he barely felt the hot

water when he plunged his hands into it, but he was laughed out and that was good. He wondered again about Pete and Henry-how they were doing and if they’d make it back okay.
“You said it explained some stuff,” the Beav said. He had started another toothpick.
“What stuff?”
“He didn’t know snow was coming,” Jonesy said. He spoke slowly, trying to recall
McCarthy’s exact words. “’so much for fair and seasonably cold,” I think that’s what he

said. But that would make sense if the last forecast he heard was for the eleventh or twelfth. Because until late yesterday, it
was
fair, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, and seasonably fuckin cold,” Beaver agreed. He pulled a dishtowel with a
pattern of faded ladybugs on it from the drawer by the sink and began to dry the dishes.
He looked across at the closed bedroom door as he worked. “What else’d he say?”
“That their camp was in Kineo.”
“
Kineo?

That’s forty, fifty miles west of here. He-” Beaver took the toothpick out of
his mouth, examined the bite-marks on it, and put the other end in his mouth. “Oh, I see.”
“Yeah. He couldn’t have done all that in a single night, but if he was out there for three days-”
“-and four nights, if he got lost on Saturday afternoon that makes four nights-”
“Yeah, and four nights. So, supposing he kept pretty much headed dead east that

whole time…” Jonesy calculated fifteen miles a day. “I’d say it’s possible.”
“But how come he didn’t freeze?” Beaver had lowered his voice to a near-whisper,
probably without being aware of it. “He’s got a nice heavy coat and he’s wearin longies,
but nights have been in the twenties everywhere north of the county line since Halloween.
So you tell me how he spends four nights out there and doesn’t freeze. Doesn’t even look
like he’s got any frostbite, just that mess on his cheek.”

“I don’t know. And there’s something else,” Jonesy said. “How come he doesn’t have the start of a beard?”
“Huh?” Beaver’s mouth opened. The toothpick hung from his lower lip. Then, very
slowly, he nodded. “Yeah. All he’s got is stubble.”
“I’d say less than a day’s growth.”
“I guess he was shavin, huh?”
“Right,” Jonesy said, picturing McCarthy lost in the woods, scared and cold and
hungry (not that he looked like he’d missed many meals, that was another thing), but still

kneeling by a stream every morning, breaking the ice with a booted foot so he could get to
the water beneath, then taking his trusty Gillette from… where? His coat pocket?
“And then this morning he lost his razor, which is why he’s got the stubble,” the Beav
said. He was smiling again, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of humor in it.
“Yeah. Same time he lost his gun. Did you see his teeth?”
Beaver made a what-now grimace.

“Four gone. Two on top, two on the bottom. He looks like the What-me-worry kid
that’s always on the front of
Mad
magazine.”
“Not a big deal, buddy. I’ve got a couple of AWOL choppers myself.” Beaver hooked
back one comer of his mouth, baring his left gum in a one-sided grin Jonesy could have
done without. “Eee? Ight ack ere.”
Jonesy shook his head. It wasn’t the same. “The guy’s a lawyer, Beav-he’s out in

public all the time, his looks are part of his living. And these babies are right out in front.
He didn’t know they were gone. I’d swear to it.”
“You don’t suppose he got exposed to radiation or something, do you?” Beaver asked
uneasily. “Your teeth fall out when you get fuckin radiation poisonin, I saw that in a movie
one time. One of the ones you’re always watching, those monster shows. You don’t
suppose it’s that, do you? Maybe he got that red mark the same time.”

“Yeah, he got a dose when the Mars Hill Nuclear Power Plant blew up,” Jonesy said,
and Beaver’s puzzled expression made him immediately sorry for the crack. “Beav, when
you get radiation poisoning, I think your hair falls out, too.”
The Beaver’s face cleared. “Yeah, that’s right. The guy in the movie ended up as bald
as Telly what’s-his-fuck, used to play that cop on TV.” He paused. “Then the guy died.
The one in the movie, I mean, not Telly, although now that I think of it-”

“This guy’s got plenty of hair,” Jonesy interrupted. Let Beaver get off on a tangent and they would likely never get back to the point. He noticed that, out of the stranger’s presence, neither of them called him Rick, or even McCarthy. Just “the guy,” as if they subconsciously wanted to turn him into something less important than a man-something generic, as if that would make it matter less if… well, if.

“Yeah,” Beaver said. “He does, doesn’t he? Plenty of hair. “‘He must have amnesia.”
“Maybe, but he remembers who he is, who he was with, shit like that. Man, that was some
trumpet-blast he blew, wasn’t it? And the
stink
! Like ether!”Yeah,” Jonesy said. “I kept
thinking of starter fluid. Diabetics get a smell when they’re tipping over. I read that in a mystery novel, I think.” “Is it like starter fluid?”

“I can’t remember.” They stood there looking at each other, listening to the wind. It
crossed Jonesy’s mind to tell Beaver about the lightning the guy claimed to have seen, but
why bother? Enough was enough. “I thought he was going to blow his cookies when he
leaned forward like that,” the Beav said.
“Didn’t you?”
Jonesy nodded.
“And he don’t look well, not at all well.”
“No.”

Beaver sighed, tossed his toothpick in the trash, and looked out the window, where the snow was coming down harder and heavier than ever. He flicked his fingers through
his hair. “Man, I wish Henry and Pete were here. Henry especially.”
“Beav, Henry’s a psychiatrist.”
“I know, but he’s the closest thing to a doctor we got-and I think that fellow needs doctoring.”
Henry actually was a physician-had to be, in order to get his certificate of

shrinkology-but he’d never practiced anything except psychiatry, as far as Jonesy knew.
Still, he understood what Beaver meant.
“Do you still think they’ll make it back, Beav?”
Beaver sighed. “Half an hour ago I would have said for sure, but it’s really comin heavy. I think so.” He looked at Jonesy somberly; there was not much of the usually happy-go-lucky Beaver Clarendon in that look. “I hope so,” he said.
Chapter Three
HENRY’S SCOUT
1

Now, as he followed the Scout’s headlights through the thickening snow, burrowing
as if through a tunnel along the Deep Cut Road toward Hole in the Wall, Henry was down
to thinking about ways to do it.
There was the Hemingway Solution, of course-way back at Harvard, as an
undergraduate, he had written a paper calling it that, so he might have been thinking about

it-in a personal way, not just as another step toward fulfilling some twinky course requirement, that was-even then. The Hemingway Solution was a shotgun, and Henry had
one of those now… not that he would do it here, with the others. The four of them had had
a lot of fine times at Hole in the Wall, and it would be unfair to do it there. It would pollute the place for Pete and Jonesy-for Beaver too, maybe Beaver most of all, and that

wouldn’t be right. But it would be soon, he could feel it coming on, something like a sneeze. Funny to compare the ending of your life to a sneeze, but that was probably what
it came to. Just
kerchoo
, and then hello darkness, my old friend.
When implementing the Hemingway Solution, you took off your shoe and your sock.
Butt of the gun went on the floor. Barrel went into your mouth. Great toe went around the
trigger.
Memo to myself

, Henry thought as the Scout fishtailed a little in the fresh snow and he corrected-the ruts helped, that was really all this road was, a couple of ruts dug by
the skidders that used it in the summertime.
If you do it that way, take a laxative and don’t
do it until after that final dump, no need to make any extra mess for the people who find
you
.
“Maybe you better slow down a little,” Pete said. He had a beer between his legs and

it was half gone, but one wouldn’t be enough to mellow Pete out. Three or four more, though, and Henry could go barrel-assing down this road at sixty and Pete would just sit
there in the passenger seat, singing along with one of those horrible fucking Pink Floyd discs. And he
could

go sixty, probably, without putting so much as another ding in the front bumper. Being in the ruts of the Deep Cut, even when they were filled with snow, was like being on rails. If it kept snowing that might change, but for now, all was well.
“Don’t worry, Pete-everything’s five-by-five.”
“You want a beer?”
“Not while I’m driving.”
“Not even out here in West Overshoe?”
“Later.”
Pete subsided, leaving Henry to follow the bore of the headlights, to thread his way

Все материалы, размещенные в боте и канале, получены из открытых источников сети Интернет, либо присланы пользователями  бота. 
Все права на тексты книг принадлежат их авторам и владельцам. Тексты книг предоставлены исключительно для ознакомления. Администрация бота не несет ответственности за материалы, расположенные здесь