Dreamcatcher(178)

Hey pretty baby take a ride with me

We're goin down to Alabama on the C&C.

And here comes the tallest cowboy in the world, a nine-foot Pecos Bill under the burning sky, towering over the crowd, little kids with their ice-cream-smeared mouths dropped open in wonder, their eyes wide; laughing parents hold them up or put them on their shoulders so they can see better. In one hand Pecos Bill waves his hat, in the other a banner which reads DERRY DAYS 1981.

We're gonna walk the tracks, stay up all night

we get a little bored, then we'll have a little fight.

'Ow eee-oh all?' Duddits asks. He has a cone of blue cotton candy in one hand, but it is forgotten; as he watches the stilt-walking cowboy pass under the burning fireworks sky, his eyes are as wide as any three-year-old's. Standing on one side of Duddits are Pete and Jonesy; on the other are Henry and the Beav. Behind the cowboy comes a retinue of vestal virgins (surely some of them are still virgins, even in this year of grace 1981) in spangly cowboy skirts and white cowboy boots, tossing the batons that won the West,

'Don't know how he can be so tall, Duds,' Pete says, laughing. He yanks a hank of blue floss from the cone in Duddits's hand and tucks it into Duddits's amazed mouth. 'Must be magic.'

They all laugh at how Duddits chews without even taking his eyes from the cowpoke on stilts. Duds is taller than all of them now, even taller than Henry. But he's still just a kid, and he makes them all happy. Magic is what he is; he won't find Josie Rinkenhauer for another year, but they know  -  he's f**kin magic. It was scary going up against Richie Grenadeau and his friends, but that was still the luckiest day of their lives  -  they all think so.

Don't say no, baby, come with me

We're gonna take a little ride on the C&C.

'Hey, Tex!' Beaver shouts, waving his own lid (a Derry Tigers baseball hat) up at the tall cowboy. 'Kiss my bender, big boy! I mean, sit on it and spin!'

And they're all killing themselves laughing (it is a memory for the ages, all right, the night Beaver ranked on the stilt-walking cowboy in the Derry Days Parade beneath that burning gunpowder sky), all but Duddits, who is staring with that expression of stoned wonder, and Owen Underhill (Owen! Henry thinks, how did you get here, buddy?), who looks worried.

Owen is shaking him, Owen is once more telling him to wake up, Henry, wake up, wake

3

up, for God's sake!'

It was the fright in Owen's voice that finally roused Henry from his dream. For a moment he could still smell peanuts and Duddits's cotton candy. Then the world came back in: white sky, snow-covered turnpike lanes, a green sign reading AUGUSTA NEXT TWO EXITS. Also Owen shaking him, and from behind them a barking sound, hoarse and desperate. Duddits coughing.

'Wake up, Henry, he's bleeding! Will you please wake the f**k - '

'I'm awake, I'm awake.'

He unbuckled his seatbelt, twisted around, got up on his knees. The overstrained muscles in his thighs shrieked in protest, but Henry paid no attention.

It was better than he expected. From the panic in Owen's voice, he had expected some sort of hemorrhage, but it was just a trickle from one nostril and a fine spray of blood from Duddits's mouth when he coughed. Owen had probably thought poor old Duds was coughing up his lungs, when in fact he'd probably strained something in his throat. Not that this wasn't potentially serious. In Duddits's increasingly fragile condition, anything was potentially serious; a random cold-germ could kill him. From the moment he'd seen him, Henry had known Duds was coming out of the last turn and heading for home.

'Duds!' he called sharply. Something different. Something dif?ferent in him, Henry. What? No time to think about it now. 'Duddits, breathe in through your nose! Your nose, Duds! Like this!'

Henry demonstrated, taking big breaths through flared nostrils . . . and when he exhaled, little threads of white flew from his nostrils. Like the fluff in milkweed pods, or dandelions gone to seed. Byrus, Henry thought. It was growing up my nose, but now it's dead. I'm sloughing it off, literally breath by breath. And then he understood the difference: the itching had stopped, in his leg and in his mouth and in the thatch of his groin. His mouth still tasted as if it had been lined with someone's old carpet, but it didn't itch.

Duddits began to imitate him, breathing deep through his nose, and his coughing began to ease as soon as it did. Henry took his paper bag, found a bottle of harmless no-alcohol cough medicine, and poured Duddits a capful. 'This'll take care of you,' Henry said. Confidence in the thought as well as the words; with Duddits, how you sounded was only part of it.

Duddits drank the capful of Robitussin, grimaced, then smiled at Henry. The coughing had stopped, but blood was still trickling from one nostril . . . and from the corner of one eye as well, Henry saw. Not good. Nor was Duddits's extreme pallor, much more noticeable than it had been at the house back in Derry. The cold . . . his lost night's sleep all this untoward excitement in someone who was  an invalid . . . not good. He was getting sick, and in a late-stage ALL patient, even a nasal infection could be fatal.

'He all right?' Owen asked.

'Duds? Duds is iron. Right, Duddits?'

'I ion,' Duddits agreed, and flexed one woefully skinny arm. The sight of his face  -  thin and tired but still trying to smile  -  made Henry feel like screaming. Life was unfair; that was something he supposed he'd known for years. But this went far beyond unfair. This was monstrous.