Dreamcatcher(19)

His mom had taught him the dozen basic things he knew about cooking, and one of them had to do with the art of making grilled cheese sandwiches. Lay in a little mouseturds first, she said  -  mouseturds being Janet Jones for mustard  -  and then butter the goddam bread, not the skillet. Butter the skillet and all's you got's fried bread with some cheese in it. He had never understood how the difference between where you put the butter, on the bread or in the skillet, could change the ultimate results, but he always did it his mother's way, even though it was a pain in the ass buttering the tops of the sandwiches while the bottoms cooked. No more would he have left his rubber boots on once he was in the house . . . because, his mother had always said, 'they draw your feet.' He had no idea just what that meant, but even now, as a man going on forty, he took his boots off as soon as he was in the door, so they wouldn't draw his feet.

'I think I might have one of these babies myself,' Jonesy said, and laid the sandwiches in the skillet, butter side down. The soup had begun to simmer, and it smelled fine  -  like comfort.

'Good idea. I certainly hope your friends are all right.'  

'Yeah,' Jonesy said. He gave the soup a stir. 'Where's your place?'

'Well, we used to hunt in Mars Hill, at a place Nat and Becky's uncle owned, but some god-bless'd idiot burned it down two summers ago. Drinking and then getting careless with the old smokes, that's what the Fire Marshal said, anyway.' Jonesy nodded. 'Not an uncommon story.'

'The insurance paid the value of the place, but we had nowhere to hunt. I thought probably that'd be the end of it, and then Steve found this nice place over in Kineo. I think it's probably an unincorporated township, just another part of the Jefferson Tract, but Kineo's what they call it, the few people who live there. Do you know where I mean?'

'I know it,' Jonesy said, speaking through lips that felt oddly numb. He was getting another of those telephone calls from nowhere. Hole in the Wall was about twenty miles east of Gosselin's. Kineo was maybe thirty miles to the west of the market. That was fifty miles in all. Was he supposed to believe that the man sitting on the couch with just his head sticking out of the down comforter had wandered fifty miles since becoming lost the previous afternoon? It was absurd. It was impossible.

'Smells good,' McCarthy said.

And it did, but Jonesy no longer felt hungry.

3

He was just bringing the chow over to the couch when he heard feet stamping on the stone outside the door. A moment later the door opened and Beaver came in. Snow swirled around his legs in a dancing mist.

'Jesus-Christ-bananas,' the Beav said. Pete had once made a list of Beav-isms, and Jesus-Christ-bananas was high on it, along with such standbys as doodlyf*ck and Kiss my bender. They were exclamations both Zen and profane. 'I thought I was gonna end up spendin the night out there, then I saw the light.' Beav raised his hands roofward, fingers spread. 'Seen de light, lawd, yessir, praise Je - ' His glasses started to unfog then, and he saw the stranger on the couch. He lowered his hands, slowly, then smiled. That was one of the reasons Jonesy had loved him ever since grade-school, although the Beav could be tiresome and wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, by any means: his first reaction to the unplanned and unexpected wasn't a frown but a smile.

'Hi,' he said. 'I'm Joe Clarendon. Who're you?'

'Rick McCarthy,' he said, and got to his feet. The comforter tumbled off him and Jonesy saw he had a pretty good potbelly pooching out the front of his sweater. Well, he thought, nothing strange, about that, at least, it's the middle-aged man's disease, and it's going to kill us in our millions during the next twenty years or so.

McCarthy stuck out his hand, started to step forward, and almost tripped over the fallen comforter. If Jonesy hadn't reached out and grabbed his shoulder, steadying him, McCarthy probably would have fallen forward, very likely cleaning out the coffee-table on which the food was now set. Again Jonesy was struck by the man's queer ungainliness  -  it made him think of himself a little that past spring, as he had learned to walk all over again. He got a closer look at the patch on the guy's cheek, and sort of wished he hadn't. It wasn't frostbite at all. It looked like a skin-tumor of some kind, or perhaps a portwine stain with stubble growing out of it.

'Who, whoa, shake it but don't break it,' Beaver said, springing forward. He grabbed McCarthy's hand and pumped it until Jonesy thought McCarthy would end up swan-diving into the coffee-table after all. He was glad when the Beav  -  all five-feet-six of him, with snow still melting into all that long black hippie hair  -  stepped back. The Beav was still smiling, more broadly than ever. With the shoulder-length hair and the thick glasses, he looked like either a math genius or a serial killer. In fact, he was a carpenter.

'Rick here's had a time of it,' Jonesy said. 'Got lost yesterday and spent last night in the woods.'

Beaver's smile stayed on but became concerned. Jonesy had an idea what was coming next and willed Beaver not to say it ?he had gotten the impression that McCarthy was a fairly religious man who might not care much for profanity  -  but of course asking Beaver to clean up his mouth was like asking the wind not to blow.

'Bitch-in-a-buzzsaw!' he cried now. 'That's f**kin terrible! Sit down! Eat! You too, Jonesy.'