Dreamcatcher

“Yeah, sure, anything,” Jonesy says. His voice is shaky.
The Beav starts forward, then looks at his friends. It is an odd look, part shame, part
defiance, and-yes, Henry would swear it-part hope.
“If you tell anybody I did this,” he says, “I’ll never chum with you guys again.”
“Never mind that crap,” Pete says, and he also sounds shaky. “If you can shut him up,
do
it!”
Beaver stands for a moment where Richie was standing while he tried to get the kid

to eat the dog-turd, then drops to his knees. Henry sees the kid’s underwear shorts are in
fact Underoos, and that they feature the Scooby-Doo characters, plus Shaggy’s Mystery Machine, just like the kid’s lunchbox.
Then Beaver takes the wailing, nearly naked boy into his arms and begins to sing.
4
Four more miles to Banbury Cross… or maybe only three. Four more miles to
Banbury Cross… or maybe only
-

Henry’s feet skidded again, and this time he had no chance to get his balance back.
He had been in a deep daze of memory, and before he could come out of it, he was flying
through the air.
He landed heavily on his back, hitting hard enough to lose his wind in a loud and painful gasp-“
Uh!
” Snow rose in a dreamy sugarpuff, and he hit the back of his head hard enough to see stars.
He lay where he was for a moment, giving anything broken ample opportunity to

announce itself When nothing did, he reached around and prodded the small of his back.
Pain, but no agony. When they were ten and eleven and spent what seemed like whole winters sledding in Strawford Park, he had taken worse hits than this and gotten up laughing. Once, with the idiotic Pete Moore piloting his Flexible Flyer and Henry riding
behind him, they had gone head-on into the big pine at the foot of the hill, the one all the

kids called the Death Tree, and survived with nothing more than a few bruises and a couple of loose teeth each. The trouble was, he hadn’t been ten or eleven for a lot of years.
“Get up, ya baby, you’re okay,” he said, and carefully came to a sitting position.
Twinges from his back, but nothing worse. just shaken up. Nothing hurt but your fuckin
pride, as they used to say. Still, he’d maybe sit here another minute or two. He was making

great time and he deserved a rest. Besides, those memories had shaken him. Richie
Grenadeau, fucking Richie Grenadeau, who had, it turned out,
flunked
off the football team-it hadn’t been the broken nose at all.
Gonna see you fellas again
, he had told them, and Henry guessed he had meant it, but the threatened confrontation had never happened,
no, never happened. Something else had happened instead.

And all that was a long time ago. Right now Banbury Cross awaited-Hole in the
Wall, at least-and he had no cock horse to ride there, only that poor man’s steed, shank’s
mare. Henry got to his feet, began to brush snow from his ass, and then someone screamed
inside his head.
“
Ow, ow, ow!
” he cried. It was like something played through a Walkman you could

turn up to concert-hall levels, like a shotgun blast that had gone off directly behind his eyes. He staggered backward, flailing for balance, and had he not run into the stiffly jutting branches of a pine growing at the left side of the road, he surely would have fallen
down again.
He disengaged himself from the tree’s clutch, ears still ringing-hell, his entire
head

was ringing-and stepped forward, hardly believing he was still alive. He raised one of his
hands to his nose, and the palm of his hand came away wet with blood. There was something loose in his mouth, too. He held his hand under it, spat out a tooth, looked at it
wonderingly, then tossed it aside, ignoring his first impulse, which had been to put it in his
coat pocket. No one, as far as he knew, did surgical implants of teeth, and he strongly

doubted that the Tooth Fairy came this far out in the boonies.
He couldn’t say for sure whose scream that had been, but he had an idea Pete Moore
had maybe just run into a big load of bad trouble.Henry listened for other voices, other thoughts, and heard none. Excellent. Although he had to admit that, even without voices,
this had certainly turned into the hunting trip of a lifetime.
“Go, big boy, on you huskies,” he said, and started running toward Hole in the Wall

again. His sense that something had gone wrong there was stronger than ever, and it was
all he could do to hold himself to a fast jog.
Go look in the chamber pot.
Why don’t we just knock on the bathroom door and ask him how he is?
Had he actually heard those voices? Yes, they were gone now, but he had heard them,
just as he had heard that terrible agonal scream. Pete? Or had it been the woman? Pretty
Becky Shue?

“Pete,” he said, the word coming out in a puff of vapor. “It was Pete.” Not entirely
sure, even now, but
pretty
sure.
At first he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find his rhythm again, but then, while he
was still worrying about it, it came back-the synchronicity of his hurrying breath and thudding feet, beautiful in its simplicity.
Three more miles to Banbury Cross
, he thought.
Going home. Just like we took
Duddits home that day.

(if you tell anybody I did this I’ll never chum with you guys again)
Henry returned to that October afternoon as to a deep dream. He dropped down the
well of memory so far and so fast that at first he didn’t sense the cloud rushing toward him, the cloud that was not words or thoughts or screams but only its redblack self, a thing
with places to go and things to do.
5
Beaver steps forward, hesitates for a moment, then drops to his knees. The retard

doesn’t see him; he is still wailing, eyes squeezed shut and narrow chest heaving. Both the
Underoos and Beaver’s zipper-studded old motorcycle jacket are comical, but none of the
other boys are laughing. Henry only wants the retard to stop crying. That crying is killing
him.
Beaver shuffles forward a little bit on his knees, then takes the weeping boy into his
arms.
“
Baby’s boat’s a silver dream, sailing near and far…”

Henry has never heard Beaver sing before, except maybe along with the radio-the
Clarendons are most certainly not churchgoers-and he is astounded by the clear tenor sweetness of his friend’s voice. In another year or so the Beav’s voice will change completely and become unremarkable, but now, in the weedy vacant lot behind the empty
building, it pierces them all, astounds them. The retarded boy reacts as well, stops crying
and looks at Beaver with wonder.
“

It sails from here in Baby’s room and to the nearest star; Sail, Baby, sail, sail on
home to me, sail the seas and sail the stars, sail on home to me…”
The last note drifts on the air and for a moment nothing in the world breathes for beauty. Henry feels like crying. The retarded boy looks at Beaver, who has been rocking
him back and forth in rhythm with the song. On his teary face is an expression of blissful

astonishment. He has forgotten his split lip and bruised cheek, his missing clothes, his lost
lunchbox. To Beaver he says
ooo or
, open syllables that could mean almost anything, but Henry understands them perfectly and sees Beaver does, too.
“I
can’t
do more,” the Beav says. He realizes his arm is still around the kid’s shirtless shoulders and takes it away.

As soon as he does, the kid’s face clouds over, not with fear this time, or with the petulance of one balked of getting his way, but in pure sorrow. Tears fill those amazingly
green eyes of his and spill down the clean tracks on his dirty cheeks. He takes Beaver’s
hand and puts Beaver’s arm back over his shoulders. “
Ooo or! Ooo or!
” he says. Beaver
looks at them, panicked. “That’s all my mother ever sang me, he says. “I always went right to fuckin sleep.”

Henry and Jonesy exchange a look and burst out laughing. Not a good idea, it’ll
probably scare the kid and he’ll start that terrible bawling again, but neither of them can
help it. And the kid
doesn’t
cry. He smiles at Henry and Jonesy instead, a sunny smile that displays a mouthful of white crammed-together teeth, and then looks back at Beaver. He
continues to hold Beaver’s arm firmly around his shoulders.
“
Ooo or!
” he commands.

“Aw, fuck, sing it again,” Pete says. “The part you know.” Beaver ends up singing it
three more times before the kid will let him stop, will let the boys work him into his pants
and his tom shirt, the one with Richie Grenadeau’s number on it. Henry has never
forgotten that haunting fragment and will sometimes recall it at the oddest times: after losing his virginity at a UNH fraternity party with “Smoke on the Water” pounding

through the speakers downstairs; after opening his paper to the obituary page and seeing
Barry Newman’s rather charming smile above his multiple chins; feeding his father, who
had come down with Alzheimer’s at the ferociously unfair age of fifty-three, his father insisting that Henry was someone named Sam. “A real man pays off his debts, Sammy,”
his father had said, and when he accepted the next bite of cereal, milk ran down his chin.

At these times what he thinks of as Beaver’s Lullaby will come back to him, and he will
feel transiently comforted. No bounce, no play.
Finally they’ve got the kid all dressed except for one red sneaker. He’s trying to put it
on himself, but he’s got it pointing backward. He is one fucked-up young American, and

Henry is at a loss to know how the three big boys could have bullied up on him. Even aside from the crying, which was like no crying Henry had ever heard before, why would
you want to be so mean?
“Let me fix that, man,” Beaver says.
“Fit wha?” the kid asks, so comically perplexed that Henry, Jonesy, and Pete all burst
out laughing again. Henry knows you’re not supposed to laugh at retards, but he can’t help
it. The kid just has a naturally funny face, like a cartoon character.

Beaver only smiles. “Your sneaker, man.”
“Fit neek?”
“Yeah, you can’t put it on that way, fuckin imposseeblo, senor.” Beaver takes the
sneaker from him and the kid watches with close interest as the Beav slips his foot into it,
draws the laces firmly against the tongue, and then ties the ends in a bow. When he’s done,

the kid looks at the bow for a moment longer, then at Beaver. Then he puts his arms around Beaver’s neck and plants a big loud smack on Beaver’s cheek.
“If you guys tell anybody he did that-” Beaver begins, but he’s smiling, clearly
pleased. “Yeah, yeah, you’ll never chum with us again, ya fuckin wank,” Jonesy says, grinning. He has held onto the lunchbox and now squats in front of the kid, holding it out.

“This yours, guy?‘The kid grins with the delight of someone encountering an old friend and snatches it. “Ooby-Ooby-Doo, where-are-oo?” he sings. “We gah-sum urk oo-do-now!” “That’s right,” Jonesy agrees. “Got some work to do now. Gotta get you the fuck
home is what we got to do. Douglas Cavell, that’s your name, right?‘The boy is holding
his lunchbox to his chest in both of his dirty hands. Now he gives it a loud smack, just like

the one he put on Beaver’s check. “I Duddits!” he cries.
“Good,” Henry says. He takes one of the boy’s hands, Jonesy takes the other, and
they help him to his feet. Maple Lane is only three blocks away and they can be there in
ten minutes, always assuming that Richie and his friends aren’t hanging around and
hoping to ambush them. “Let’s get you home, Duddits. Bet your Mom’s worried about
you.”

But first Henry sends Pete to the corner of the building to look up the driveway.
When Pete comes back and reports the coast clear, Henry lets them go that far. Once they
are on the sidewalk, where people can see them, they’ll be safe. Until then, he will take no
chances. He sends Pete out a second time, tells him to scout all the way to the street, then
whistle if everything is cool.
“Dey gone,” Duddits says.

“Maybe,” Henry says, “but I’ll feel better if Pete takes a look.” Duddits stands
serenely among them, looking at the pictures on his lunchbox, while Pete goes out to look
around. Henry feels okay about sending him. He hasn’t exaggerated Pete’s speed; if Richie
and his friends try to jump him, Pete will turn on the jets and leave them in the dust.
“You like this show, man?” Beaver says, taking the lunchbox. He speaks quietly.

Henry watches with some interest, curious to see if the retarded boy will cry for his lunchbox. He doesn’t.
“Ey Ooby-Doos!” the retarded kid says. His hair is golden, curly. Henry still can’t tell
what age he is.
“I
know
they’re Scooby-Doos,” the Beav says patiently, “but they never change their clothes. Pete’s right about that. I mean, fuck me Freddy, right?”
“Ite!” He holds out his hands for the lunchbox and Beaver gives it back. The retarded

boy hugs it, then smiles at them. It is a beautiful smile, Henry thinks, smiling himself. It
makes him think of how you are cold when you have been swimming in the ocean for awhile, but when you come out, you wrap a towel around your bony shoulders and
goosepimply back and you’re warm again.
Jonesy is also smiling. “Duddits,” he says, “which one is the dog?”
The retarded boy looks at him, still smiling, but puzzled now, too.
“The
dog

,” Henry says. “Which one’s the
dog
?”
Now the boy looks at Henry, his puzzlement deepening.
“Which one’s
Scooby
, Duddits?” Beaver asks, and Duddits’s face clears. He points.
“Ooby! Ooby-Ooby-Doo!
Eee
a dog!”
They all burst out laughing, Duddits is laughing too, and then Pete whistles. They start moving and have gone about a quarter of the way up the driveway when Jonesy says,
“Wait! Wait!”

He runs to one of the dirty office windows and peers in, cupping his hands to the sides of his face to cut the glare, and Henry suddenly remembers why they came. Tina Jean What’s-Her-Face’s pussy. All that seems about a thousand years ago.
After about ten seconds, Jonesy calls, “Henry! Beav! Come here! Leave the kid
there!”
Beaver runs to Jonesy’s side. Henry turns to the retarded boy and says, “Stand right

there, Duddits. Right there with your lunchbox, okay?”
Duddits looks up at him, green eyes shining, lunchbox held to his chest. After a
moment he nods, and Henry runs to join his friends at the window. They have to squeeze

together, and Beaver grumbles that someone is steppin on his fuckin feet, but they manage. After a minute or so, puzzled by their failure to show up on the sidewalk, Pete joins them, poking his face in between Henry’s and Jonesy’s shoulders. Here are four boys
at a dirty office window, three with their hands cupped to the sides of their faces to cut the
glare, and a fifth boy standing behind them in the weedy driveway, holding his lunchbox

against his narrow chest and looking up at the white sky, where the sun is trying to break
through. Beyond the dirty glass (where they will leave clean crescents to mark the places
where their foreheads rested) is an empty room. Scattered across the dusty floor are a number of deflated white tadpoles that Henry recognizes as jizzbags. On one wall, the one
directly across from the window, is a bulletin board. Tacked to it is a map of northern New

England and a Polaroid photograph of a woman holding her skirt up. You can’t see her pussy, though, just some white panties. And she’s no high-school girl. She’s old. She must
be at least thirty.
“Holy God,” Pete says at last, giving Jonesy a disgusted look. “We came all the way
down here for
that?
”
For a moment Jonesy looks defensive, then grins and jerks his thumb back over his shoulder. “No,” he says. “We came for
him
.”
6

Henry was pulled from recall by an amazing and totally unexpected realization: he
was terrified, had been terrified for some time. Some new thing had been hovering just below the threshold of his consciousness, held down by the vivid memory of meeting Duddits. Now it had burst forward with a frightened yell, insisting on recognition.
He skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, flailing his arms to keep from falling

down in the snow again, and then simply stood there panting, eyes wide. What now? He
was only two and a half miles from Hole in the Wall, almost there, so what the Christ now?
There’s a cloud, he thought. Some kind of cloud, that’s what. I can’t tell what it is but
I can’t tell it-I never felt anything so clearly in my life. My adult life, anyway. I have to get
off the road. I have to get away from it. Get away from the movie. There’s a movie in the

cloud. The kind Jonesy likes. A scary one.
“That’s stupid,” he muttered, knowing it wasn’t.
He could hear the approaching wasp-whine of an engine. It was coming from the
direction of Hole in the Wall and coming fast, a snowmobile engine, almost certainly the
Arctic Cat stored at camp… but it was also the redblack cloud with the movie going on
inside it, some terrible black energy rushing toward him.
For a moment Henry was frozen with a hundred childish horrors, things under beds

and things in coffins, squirming bugs beneath overturned rocks and the furry jelly that was
the remains of a long-dead baked rat the time Dad had moved the stove out from the wall
to check the plug. And horrors that weren’t childish at all: his father, lost in his own bedroom and bawling with fear; Barry Newman, running from Henry’s office with that
vast look of terror on his face, terror because he had been asked to look at something he

wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t, acknowledge; sitting awake at four in the morning with a glass of Scotch, all the world a dead socket, his own mind a dead socket and oh baby it
was a thousand years till dawn and all lullabys had been cancelled. Those things were in
the redblack cloud rushing down on him like that pale horse in the Bible, those things and
more. Every bad thing he had ever suspected was now coming toward him, not on a pale

horse but on an old snowmobile with a rusty cowling. Not death but worse than death. It
was Mr Gray.
Get off the road!
his mind screamed.
Get off the road now! Hide!
For a moment he couldn’t move-his feet seemed to grow heavy. The gash on his
thigh, the one the turnsignal had made, burned like a brand. Now he understood how a deer caught in the headlights felt, or a chipmunk hopping stupidly back and forth in front

of an oncoming lawnmower. The cloud had robbed him of his ability to help himself He was frozen in its rushing path.
What got him going, oddly enough, was all those thoughts of suicide. Had he
agonized his way to that decision on five hundred sleepless nights only to be robbed of his

option by a kind of buck-fever? No, by God, no, it wouldn’t be, Suffering was bad enough; allowing his own terrified body to mock that suffering by locking up and just standing here while a demon ran him down… no, he would not allow that to happen.
And so he moved, but it was like moving in a nightmare, fighting his way through air
which seemed to have grown as thick as taffy. His legs rose and fell with the slowness of

an underwater ballet. Had he been running down this road? Actually
running?
The idea now seemed impossible, no matter how strong the memory.
Still, he kept moving while the whine of the approaching engine grew closer,
deepening to a stuttery roar. And at last he was able to get into the trees on the south side
of the road. He managed perhaps fifteen feet, far enough so there was no snow cover, only

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