Dreamcatcher(166)

'I'm sorry if I upset you.'

'Oh, bite me. You act like we f**king abandoned him.' Which, of course, was pretty much what they had done.

Owen said nothing. He was squinting through the swirling snow, looking for the Dearborn Street sign in the pallid gray light of early morning . . . and there it was, just up ahead. A plow passing along Kansas Street had plugged the end of Dearborn, but Owen thought the Humvee could beat its way past.

'It's not like I stopped thinking about him,' Henry said. He started to continue by thought, then switched back to words again. Thinking about Duddits was too revealing. 'We all thought about him. In fact, Jonesy and I were going to go see him this spring. Then Jonesy had his accident, and I forgot all about it. Is that so surprising?'

'Not at all,' Owen said mildly. He swung the wheel hard to the right, flicked it back the other way to control the skid, then floored the accelerator. The Hummer hit the packed and crusty wall of snow hard enough to throw both of them forward against their seatbelts. Then they were through, Owen jockeying the wheel to keep from hitting the drifted-in cars parked on either side of the street.

'I don't need a guilt-trip from someone who was planning to barbecue a few hundred civilians,' Henry grumbled.

Owen stamped on the brake with both feet, throwing them forward into their harnesses again, this time hard enough to lock them. The Humvee skidded to a diagonal stop in the street.

'Shut the f**k up.'

Don't be talking shit you don't understand.

'I'm likely going to be a'

dead man because of

'you, so why don't you just keep all your f**king'

self-indulgent

(picture of a spoiled-looking kid with his lower lip stuck out)

'rationalizing bullshit'

to yourself.

Henry stared at him, shocked and stunned. When was the last time someone had talked to him that way? The answer was probably never.

'I only care about one thing,' Owen said. His face was pale and strained and exhausted. 'I want to find your Typhoid Jonesy and stop him. All right? Fuck your precious tender feelings, f**k how tired you are, and f**k you. I'm here.'

'All right,' Henry said.

'I don't need lessons in morality from a guy planning to blow his overeducated, self-indulgent brains out.'

'Okay.'

'So f**k your mother and die.'

Silence inside the Humvee. Nothing from outside but the monotonous vacuum-cleaner shriek of the wind.

At last Henry said, 'Here's what we'll do. I'll f**k your mother, then die; you f**k my mother, then die. At least we'll avoid the incest taboo.'

Owen began to smile. Henry smiled back.

Mat're Jonesy and Mr Gray doing? Owen asked Henry. Can you tell?

Henry licked at his lips. The itching in his leg had largely stopped, but his tongue tasted like an old piece of shag rug. 'No. They're cut off. Gray's responsible for that, probably. And your fearless leader? Kurtz? He's getting closer, isn't he?'

'Yeah. If we're going to maintain any kind of lead on him at all, we better make this quick.'

'Then we will.' Owen scratched the red stuff on the side of his face, looked at the bits of red that came off on his fingers, then got moving again.

Number 41, you said?

Yeah. Owen?

What?

I'm scared.

Of Duddits?

Sort of, yeah.

Why?

I don't know.'

Henry looked at Owen bleakly.

I feel like there's something wrong with him.

7

It was her after-midnight fantasy made real, and when the knock came at the door, Roberta was unable to get up. Her legs felt like water. The night was gone, but it had been replaced by a pallid, creepy morning light that wasn't much better, and they were out there, Pete and Beav, the dead ones had come for her son.

The fist fell again, booming, rattling the pictures on the walls.

One of them was a framed front page of the Derry News, the photo showing Duddits, his friends, and Josie Rinkenhauer, all of them with their arms around each other, all of them grinning like mad (how well Duddits had looked in that picture, how strong and normal) below a headline reading HIGH-SCHOOL CHUMS PLAY DETECTIVE, FIND MISSING GIRL.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

No, she thought, I'll just sit here and eventually they'll go away, they'll have to go away, because with dead people you have to invite them in and if I just sit tight -

But then Duddits was running past her rocker  -  running, when these days just walking wore him out, and his eyes were full of their old blazing brightness, such good boys they had been and such happiness they had brought him, but now they were dead, they had come to him through the storm and they were dead -

'Duddie, no!' she screamed, but he paid her no attention. He rushed past that old framed picture  -  Duddits Cavell on the front page, Duddits Cavell a hero, would wonders never cease  -  and she heard what he was shouting just as he opened the door on the dying storm:

'Ennie! Ennie! ENNIE!'

8

Henry opened his mouth  -  to say what he never knew, because nothing came out. He was thunderstruck, dumbstruck. This wasn't Duddits, couldn't be  -  it was some sickly uncle or older brother, pale and apparently bald beneath his pushed-back Red Sox cap. There was stubble on his cheeks, crusts of blood around his nostrils, and deep dark circles beneath his eyes. And yet -