Dreamcatcher(20)

'Nah,' Jonesy said, 'you go on and eat that. You're the one who just came in out of the snow.'

'You sure?'

'I am. I'll just scramble myself some eggs. Rick can catch you up on his story.' Maybe it'll make more sense to you than it does to me, he thought.

'Okay.' Beaver took off his Jacket (red) and his vest (orange, of course). He started to toss them on the woodpile, then thought better of it. 'Wait, wait, got something you might want.' He stuck his hand deep into one of the pockets of his down jacket, rummaged, and came out with a paperback book, considerably bent but seemingly none the worse for wear otherwise. Little devils with pitchforks danced across the cover  -  Small Vices, by Robert Parker. It was the book Jonesy had been reading in the stand.

The Beav held it out to him, smiling. 'I left your sleeping-bag, but I figured you wouldn't be able to sleep tonight unless you knew who the f**k done it.'

'You shouldn't have gone up there,' Jonesy said, but he was touched in a way only Beaver could touch him. The Beav had come back through the blowing snow and hadn't been able to make out if Jonesy was up in the tree-stand or not, not for sure. He could have called, but for the Beav, calling wasn't enough, only seeing was believing.

'Not a problem, Beaver said, and sat down next to McCarthy, who was looking at him as a person might look at a new and rather exotic kind of small animal.

'Well, thanks,' Jonesy said. 'You get around that sandwich. I'm going to do eggs.' He started away, then stopped. 'What about Pete and Henry? You think they'll make it back okay?'

he Beav opened his mouth, but before he could answer the wind gasped around the cabin again, making the walls creak and rising to a grim whistle in the eaves.

'Aw, this is just a cap of snow,' Beaver said when the gust died away.

'They'll make it back. Getting out again if there comes a real norther, that might be a different story.' He began to gob?ble the grilled cheese sandwich. Jonesy went over to the kitchen to scramble some eggs and heat up another can of soup. He felt better about McCarthy now that Beaver was here. The truth was he always felt better when the Beav was around. Crazy but true.

4

By the time he got the eggs scrambled and the soup hot, McCarthy was chatting away to Beaver as if the two of them had been friends for the last ten years. If McCarthy was offended by the Beav's litany of mostly comic profanity, that was outweighed by Beav's considerable charm. 'There's no explaining it,' Henry had once told Jonesy. 'He's a tribble, that's all  -  you can't help liking him. It's why his bed is never empty  -  it sure isn't his looks women respond to.'

Jonesy brought his eggs and soup into the living area, working not to limp  -  it was amazing how much more his his hip hurt in bad weather, he had always thought that was an old wives' tale but apparently it was not  -  and sat in one of the chairs at the end of the couch. McCarthy had been doing more talking than eating, it seemed. He'd barely touched his soup, and had eaten only half of his grilled cheese.

'How you boys doin?' Jonesy asked. He shook pepper onto his eggs and fell to with a will  -  his appetite had made a complete comeback, it seemed.

'We're two happy whoremasters,' Beaver said, but although he sounded as chipper as ever, Jonesy thought he looked worried, perhaps even alarmed. 'Rick's been telling me about his adventures. It's as good as a story in one of those men's magazines they had in the barber shop when I was a kid.' He turned back to McCarthy, still smiling  -  that was the Beav, always smiling  -  and flicked a hand through the heavy fall of his black hair. 'Old Man Castonguay was the barber on our side of Derry when I was a kid, and he scared me so f**kin bad with those clippers of his that I been stayin away from em ever since.'

McCarthy gave a weak little smile but made no reply. He picked up the other half of his cheese sandwich, looked at it, then put it back down again. The red mark on his cheek glowed like a brand. Beaver, meanwhile, rushed on, as if he was afraid of what McCarthy might say if given half a chance. Outside it was snowing harder than ever, blowing, too, and Jonesy thought of Henry and Pete out there, probably on the Deep Cut Road by now, in Henry's old Scout.

'Not only did Rick here just about get eaten up by something in the middle of the night  -  a bear, he thinks it was  -  he lost his rifle, too. A brand new Remington .30-.30, f**kin A, you won't never see that again, not a chance in a hundred thousand.'

'I know,' McCarthy said. The color was fading out of his cheeks again, that leaden look coming back in. 'I don't even remember when I put it down, or - '

There was a sudden low rasping noise, like a locust. Jonesy felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen, thinking it was something caught in the fireplace chimney. Then he realized it was McCarthy. Jonesy had heard some loud farts in his time, some long ones, too, but nothing like this. It seemed to go on forever, although it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. Then the smell hit.

McCarthy had picked up his spoon; now he dropped it back into his barely touched soup and raised his right hand to his blemished cheek in an almost girlish gesture of embarrassment. 'Oh gosh, I'm sorry,' he said.

'Not a bit, more room out than there is in,' Beaver said, but that was just instinct running his mouth, instinct and the habits of a lifetime  -  Jonesy could see he was as shocked by that smell as Jonesy was himself It wasn't the sulfurous rotten-egg odor that made you laugh and roll your eyes and wave your hand in front of your face, yelling Ah, Jesus, who cut the cheese? Nor one of those methane swamp-gas farts, either. It was the smell Jonesy had detected on McCarthy's breath, only stronger  -  a mixture of ether and overripe bananas, like the starter-fluid you shot into your carburetor on a subzero morning.