Dreamcatcher

He was nothing but a heap of tasty white meat that happened to still be breathing. Without
his rifle, he was more defenseless than the squirrel he’d seen scurrying around the buck’s
feet-if noticed by a bear, the squirrel could at least run up the nearest tree, all the way to
the thin top branches where no bear could possibly follow. The fact that
this

bear never so much as looked at him didn’t make Pete feel much better. Where there was one, there would be more, and the next one might not be so preoccupied.
Once he was sure the bear was gone, Pete struggled to his feet again, his heart
hammering. He had left that foolish farting woman back there alone, but really, how much
protection would he have been able to provide if a bear decided to attack? The thing was,

he had to get his rifle. Henry’s too, if he could carry it. For the next five minutes-until he
got to the top of the hill-Pete thought about firepower first and beer second. By the time he
began his cautious descent on the other side, however, he was back to beer. Put it in a bag
and hang the bag over his shoulder. And no stopping to drink one on the way back. He’d

have one when he was sitting in front of the campfire again. It would be a reward beer, and there was nothing better than a reward beer.
You’re an alcoholic. You know that, don’t you? Fucking alcoholic.
Yes, and what did that mean? That you couldn’t fuck up.
Couldn’t get caught leaving a semi-comatose woman alone in the woods, let’s say,
while you went off in search of the suds. And once he got back to the shelter, he had to

remember to toss his empties deep into the woods. Although Henry might know anyway.
The way they always seemed to know stuff about each other when they were together.
And mental link or no mental link, you had to get up pretty goddam early in the morning
to put one over on Henry Devlin.
Yet Pete thought Henry would probably let him alone about the beer. Unless, that
was, Pete decided the time had come to talk about it. To maybe ask Henry for help. Which

Pete might do, in time. Certainly he didn’t like the way he felt about himself right now; leaving that woman alone back there said something about Peter Moore that wasn’t so nice. But Henry… there was something wrong with Henry, too, this November. Pete didn’t
know if Beaver felt it, but he was pretty sure Jonesy did. Henry was kind of tucked up. He
was maybe even-
From behind him there came a wet grunt. Pete screamed and whirled around. His

knee locked up again, locked up savagely, but in his fright he barely noticed. It was the bear, the bear had circled back behind him, that bear or another one-It wasn’t a bear. It was a moose, and it walked past Pete with no more than a glance
as he fell into the road again, cursing low in his throat and holding his leg, looking up into
the lightly falling snow and cursing himself for a fool.
An alcoholic fool.

He had a frightening few moments when it seemed that this time the knee wasn’t
going to let go-he’d torn something in it and here he would lie in the exodus of animals
until Henry finally returned on the snowmobile, and Henry would say
What the fuck are
you doing here? Why did you leave her alone? As if I didn’t know.
But at last he was able to get up again. The best he could do was a gimpy sidesaddle

hobble, but it was better than lying in the snow a couple of yards from a fresh pile of steaming moose shit. He could now see the overturned Scout, its wheels and undercarriage
covered with fresh snow. He told himself that if his latest fall had happened on the other
side of the hill, he would have gone back to the woman and the fire, but that now, with the
Scout actually in sight, it was better to go on. That the guns were his main objective, the

bottles of Bud just an extra added attraction. And almost believed it. As far as getting back… well, he would make it somehow. He’d gotten this far, hadn’t he?
Fifty yards or so from the Scout, he heard a rapidly approaching
whup-whup-whup-
the unmistakable sound of a helicopter. He looked skyward eagerly, preparing himself to
stand upright long enough to wave-God, if anyone needed a little help from the sky, it was

him-but the helicopter never quite broke through the low ceiling. For a moment he saw a
dark shape running through the dreck almost directly above him, the bleary flash of its lights, as well-and then the sound of the copter was moving off to the east, in the direction

the animals were running. He was dismayed to feel a nasty sense of relief lurking just below his disappointment: if the helicopter had landed, he never would’ve gotten to the beer, and he had come all this way, all this damn way.
3
Five minutes later he was down on his knees and climbing carefully into the
overturned Scout. He quickly learned that his bad knee wouldn’t support him for long (it

was swelled against his jeans now like a big painful loaf of bread), and more or less swam
into the snow-coated interior. He didn’t like it; all the smells seemed too strong, all the dimensions too close. It was almost like crawling into a grave, one that smelled of Henry’s
cologne.
The groceries were sprayed all over the back, but Pete barely gave the bread and cans
and mustard and the package of red hot dogs (red dogs were about all Old Man Gosselin

carried for meat) a glance. It was the beer he was interested in, and it looked like only one
bottle had broken when the Scout turned turtle. Drunk’s luck. The smell was strong-of course the one he’d been drinking from had spilled as well-but beer was a smell he liked.
Henry’s cologne, on the other hand… phew, Jesus. In a way it was as bad as the smell of
the crazy lady’s gas. And he didn’t know why the smell of cologne should make him think

of coffins and graves and funeral flowers, but it did.
“Why would you want to wear cologne in the woods anyway, old sport?” he asked,
the words coming out in little puffs of white vapor. And the answer of course was that Henry hadn’t been-the smell wasn’t really here at all, just the smell of beer. For the first
time in a long time Pete found himself thinking about the pretty real estate lady who had

lost her keys outside the Bridgton Pharmacy, and how he had known she wasn’t going to
meet him for dinner, didn’t want to be within ten miles of him. Was smelling nonexistent
cologne like that? He didn’t know, only that he didn’t like the way the smell seemed all
mixed up in his mind with the idea of death.
Forget it, numbnuts. You’re spooking yourself, that’s all. There’s a big difference
between really seeing the line and just spooking yourself. Forget about it and get what you

came for.
“Good fuckin idea,” Pete said.
The store-bags were plastic, not paper, the kind with handles; Old Man Gosselin had
marched at least that far into the future. Pete snagged one, and as he did, felt a rip of pain
on the pad of his right hand. Only one goddam broken bottle and so naturally he’d cut himself on it, and pretty deep, from the feel. Maybe this was his punishment for leaving

the woman alone back there. If so, he’d take it like a man and count himself let off easy.
He gathered up eight bottles, started to work his way back out of the Scout, then thought again. Had he staggered all the way back here for a lousy eight beers? “I think not,” he muttered, and then got the other seven, taking time to scrounge them all in spite
of how creepy the Scout was making him feel. At last he backed out, fighting the panicky

idea that something small, but with big teeth, would soon spring at him, taking a great big
chomp out of his balls. Pete’s Punishment, Part Two.
He didn’t exactly freak, but he wiggled back out faster than he’d wiggled in, and his
knee locked up again just as he got entirely clear. He rolled over on his back, whimpering,
looking up into the snow-the last of it, now coming down in great big flakes as lacy as a
woman’s best underwear-and massaging the knee, telling it to come on, now, honey, come

on now, sweetie, let go, you fucking bitch. And just as he was starting to think that this time it wouldn’t, it did. He hissed through his teeth, sat up, and looked at the bag
“THANKS FOR SHOPPING AT OUR PLACE! printed on the side in red.
“Where else
would
I shop, you old bastard?” he asked. He decided to allow himself
one beer after all before starting back to the woman. Hell, it would lighten the load.

Pete fished one out, twisted the cap, and poured the top half down his throat in four
big gulps. It was cold and the snow he was sitting in was even colder, but he still felt better. That was the magic of beer. The magic of scotch, vodka, and gin as well, but when
it came to alcohol, he was with Tom T. Hall: he liked beer.
Looking at the bag, he thought again of the carrot-top back in the store-the mystified

grin, the Chinese eyes that had originally earned such people the term mongoloids, as in
mongoloid idiot. That led him to Duddits again, Douglas Cavell if you wanted to be formal about it. Why Duds had been on his mind so much lately Pete couldn’t say, but he
had, and Pete made himself a promise: when this was over, he was going to stop in Derry
and see old Duddits. He’d make the others go with him, and somehow he didn’t think he’d

have to try very hard to convince them. Duddits was probably the reason they were still
friends after so many years. Hell, most kids never so much as thought of their college or
high-school buddies again, let alone those they’d chummed with in junior high… what was now known as middle school, although Pete had no doubt it was the same sad jungle

of insecurities, confusion, smelly armpits, crazy fads, and half-baked ideas. They hadn’t known Duddits from school, of course, because Duddits didn’t go to Derry junior High.
Duds went to The Mary M. Snowe School for the Exceptional, which was known to the
neighborhood kids as The Retard Academy or sometimes just The Dumb School. In the
ordinary course of events their paths never would have crossed, but there was this vacant

lot out on Kansas Street, and the abandoned brick building that went with it. Facing the street you could still read TRACKER BROTHERS SHIPPING TRUCKING AND
STORAGE in fading white paint on the old red brick. And on the other side, in the big alcove where the trucks had once backed up to unload… something else was painted there.
Now, sitting in the snow but no longer feeling it melting to cold slush under his ass,

drinking his second beer without even being aware he had opened it (the first empty he had cast into the woods where he could still see animals moving east), Pete remembered
the day they had met Duds. He remembered Beaver’s stupid jacket that the Beav had loved so much, and Beaver’s voice, thin but somehow powerful, announcing the end of something and the beginning of something else, announcing in some ungraspable but

perfectly real and knowable way that the course of their lives had changed one Tuesday afternoon when all they had been planning was some two-on-two in Jonesy’s driveway
and then maybe a game of Parcheesi in front of the TV; now, sitting here in the woods beside the overturned Scout, still smelling the cologne Henry hadn’t been wearing,

drinking his life’s happy poison with a hand wearing a bloodstained glove, the car salesman remembered the boy who had not quite given up his dreams of being an
astronaut in spite of his increasing problems with math (Jonesy had helped him, and then
Henry had helped him and then, in tenth grade, he’d been beyond help), and he

remembered the other boys as well, mostly the Beav, who had turned the world upside down with a high yell in his just-beginning-to-change voice:
Hey you guys, quit it! Just
fucking QUIT it!
“Beaver,” Pete said, and toasted the dark afternoon as he sat with his back propped
against the overturned Scout’s hood. “You were beautiful, man.” But hadn’t they all been?
Hadn’t they all been beautiful?
4

Because he is in the eighth grade and his last class of the day is music, on the ground
floor, Pete is always out before his three best friends, who always finish the day on the second floor, Jonesy and Henry in American Fiction, which is a reading class for smart kids, and Beaver next door in Math for Living, which is actually Math for Stupid Boys and Girls. Pete is fighting hard not to have to take that one next year, but he thinks it’s a

fight he will ultimately lose. He can add, subtract, multiply, and divide; he can do fractions, too, although it takes him too much time. But now there is something new, now
there is the x. Pete does not understand the x, and fears it.
He stands outside the gate by the chainlink fence as the rest of the eighth-graders and

the babyass seventh-graders stream by, stands there kicking his boots and pretending to smoke, one hand cupped to his mouth and the other concealed beneath it-the concealed hand the one with the hypothetical hidden butt.
And now here come the ninth-graders from the second floor, and walking among

them like royalty-like uncrowned kings, almost, although Pete would never say such a corny thing out loud-are his friends, Jonesy and Beaver and Henry. And if there is a king
of kings it is Henry, whom all the girls love even if he
does
wear glasses. Pete is lucky to have such friends, and he knows it-is probably the luckiest eighth-grader in Derry, x or no
x. The fact that having friends in the ninth grade keeps him from getting beaten up by any

of the eighth-grade badasses is the very least of it.
“Hey, Pete!” Henry says as the three of them come sauntering out through the gate.
As always, Henry seems surprised to see him there, but absolutely delighted. “What you
up to, my man?”
“Nothin much,” Pete replies as always. “What’s up with you?”
“SSDD,” Henry says, whipping off his glasses and giving them a polish. If they had

been a club, SSDD likely would have been their motto; eventually they will even teach Duddits to say it-it came out
Say shih, iffa deh
in Duddits-ese, and is one of the few things Duddits says that his parents can’t understand. This of course will delight Pete and his friends.Now, however, with Duddits still half an hour in their future, Pete just echoes Henry: “Yeah, man, SSDD.”

Same shit, different day. Except in their hearts, the boys only believe the first half, because in their hearts they believe it’s the same day, day after day. It’s Derry, it’s 1978,
and it win always be 1978. They say there will be a future, that they will live to see the
twenty-first century-Henry will be a lawyer, Jonesy win be a writer, Beaver will be a long-
haul truck-driver, Pete will be an astronaut with a NASA patch on his shoulder-but this is

just what they say, as they chant the Apostle’s Creed in church with no real idea of what’s
coming out of their mouths; what they’re really interested in is Maureen Chessman’s skirt,
which was short to begin with and has ridden a pretty good way up her thighs as she shifted around. They believe in their hearts that one day Maureen’s skirt will ride up high
enough for them to see the color of her panties, and they similarly believe that Derry is

forever and so are they. It will always be junior high school and quarter of three, they will always be walking up Kansas Street together to play basketball in Jonesy’s driveway (Pete
also has a hoop in his driveway but they like Jonesy’s better because his father has posted
it low enough so you can dunk), talking about the same old things: classes and teachers and which kid got into a fuckin pisser with which kid, or which kid is going to get into a

fuckin pisser with which kid, whether or not so-and-so could take so-and-so if they got into a fuckin pisser (except they never will because so-and-so and so-and-so are tight), who did something gross lately (their favorite so far this year has to do with a seventh-grader named Norm Parmeleau, now known as Macaroni Parmeleau, a nickname that will
pursue him for years, even into the new century of which these boys speak but do not in

their hearts actually believe; to win a fifty-cent bet, Norm Parmeleau had one day in the
cafeteria firmly plugged both nostrils with macaroni and cheese, then hawked it back like
snot and swallowed it; Macaroni Parmeleau who, like so many junior-high-school kids, has mistaken notoriety for celebrity), who is going out with whom (if a girl and a guy are
observed going home together after school, they are presumed to be
probably

going out; if they are observed ban in onto hands or suckin face it is a certainty), who is going to win
the Super Bowl (fuckin Patriots, fuckin Boston Patriots, only they never do, having to root
for the Patriots is a fuckin pisser). All these topics are the same and yet endlessly fascinating as they walk from the same school (
I believe in God the father almighty
) on the same street (
maker of heaven and earth
) under the same white everlasting October sky (

world without end
) with the same friends (
amen
). Same shit, same day, that is the truth in their hearts, and they’re down with K.C. and the Sunshine Band on this one, even though
they will all tell you RIR-DS (rock is rolling, disco sucks): that’s the way they like it.
Change will come upon them sudden and unannounced, as it always does with children of
this age; if change needed permission from Junior-high-school students, it would cease to
exist.

Today they also have hunting to talk about, because next month Mr Clarendon is for
the first time going to take them up to Hole in the Wall. They’ll be gone for three days,
two of them schooldays (there is no problem getting permission for this trip from the school, and absolutely no need to lie about the trip’s purpose; southern Maine may have

gotten citified, but up here in God’s country, hunting is still considered part of a young person’s education, especially if the young person is a boy). The idea of creeping through
the woods with loaded rifles while their friends are back at dear old DJHS, just droning away, strikes them as incredibly, delightfully boss, and they walk past The Retard
Academy on the other side of the street without even seeing it. The retards get out at the

same time as the kids at Derry junior High, but most of them go home with their mothers
on the special retard bus, which is blue instead of yellow and is reputed to have a bumper
sticker on it that says SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH OR I’ll KILL YOU. As Henry,
Beaver, Jonesy, and Pete walk past Mary M. Snowe on the other side, a few high-

functioning retards who are allowed to go home by themselves are still walking along, goggling around themselves with those weird expressions of perpetual wonder. Pete and his friends see them without seeing them, as always. They are just part of the world’s wallpaper.

Henry, Jonesy, and Pete are listening closely to the Beav, who’s telling them that when they get to Hole in the Wall they have to get down in The Gulch, because that’s
where the big ones always go, there’s bushes down there that they like. “Me and my Dad have seen about a billion deer in there,” he says. The zippers on his old motorcycle jacket
jingle agreeably.
They argue about who’s going to get the biggest deer and where is the best place to

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