Dreamcatcher(22)

'You need to take a squirt, partner?' the Beav asked.

McCarthy shook his head. He seemed almost hypnotized by the clean blue sheet Jonesy had uncovered. Jonesy was once again struck by how glassy the man's eyes were. Like the eyes of a stuffed trophy head. Suddenly and unbidden, he saw his living room back in Brookline, that upscale municipality next door to Boston. Braided rugs, early American furniture . . . and McCarthy's head mounted over the fireplace. Bagged that one up in Maine, he would tell his guests at cocktail parties. Big bastard, dressed out at one-seventy.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the Beav was looking at him with something like alarm.

'Twinge in the hip,' he said. 'Sorry. Mr McCarthy  -  Rick  -  you'll want to take off your sweater and pants. Boots too, of course.

McCarthy looked around at him like a man roused from a dream. 'Sure,' he said. 'You bet.'

'Need help?' Beaver asked.

'No, gosh no.' McCarthy looked alarmed or amused or both. 'I'm not that far gone.'

'Then I'll leave Jonesy to supervise.'

Beaver slipped out and McCarthy began to undress, starting by pulling his sweater off over his head. Beneath it he wore a red-and-black hunter's shirt, and beneath that a thermal undershirt. And yes, there was less gut poking out the front of that shirt, Jonesy was sure of it.

Well . . . almost sure. Only an hour ago, he reminded himself, he had been sure McCarthy's coat was the head of a deer.

McCarthy sat down in the chair beside the window to take off his shoes, and when he did there was another fart  -  not as long as the first one, but just as loud and hoarse. Neither of them commented on it, or the resulting smell, which was strong enough in the little room to make Jonesy's eyes feel like watering.

McCarthy kicked his boots off  -  they made clunking sounds on the wooden floor  -  then stood up and unbuckled his belt. As he pushed his blue jeans down, revealing the lower half of his thermal underwear, the Beav came back in with a ceramic pot from upstairs. He put it down by the head of the bed. 'Just in case you have to, you know, urk. Or if you get one of those collect calls you just have to take right away.'

McCarthy looked at him with a dullness Jonesy found alarming  -  a stranger in what had been his bedroom, somehow ghostly in his baggy long underwear. An ill stranger. The question was just how ill.

'In case you can't make the bathroom,' the Beav explained. 'Which, by the way, is close by. Just bang a left outside the bedroom door, but remember it's the second door as you go along the wall, okay? If you forget and go in the first one, you'll be taking a shit in the linen closet.'

Jonesy was surprised into a laugh and didn't care for the sound of it in the slightest  -  high and slightly hysterical.

'I feel better now,' McCarthy said, but Jonesy detected absol?utely zero sincerity in the man's voice. And the guy just stood there in his underwear, like an android whose memory circuits have been about three-quarters erased. Before, he had shown some life, if not exactly vivacity; now that was gone, like the color in his cheeks.

'Go on, Rick,' Beaver said quietly. 'Lie down and catch some winks. Work on getting your strength back.'

'Yes, okay.' He sat down on the freshly opened bed and looked out the window. His eyes were wide and blank. Jonesy thought the smell in the room was dissipating, but perhaps he was just getting used to it, the way you got used to the smell of the monkeyhouse at the zoo if you stayed in there long enough. 'Gosh, look at it snow.'

'Yeah,' Jonesy said. 'How's your stomach now?'

'Better.' McCarthy's eyes moved to Jonesy's face. They were the solemn eyes of a frightened child. 'I'm sorry about passing gas that way  -  I never did anything like that before, not even in the Army when it seemed like we ate beans every day  -  but I feel better.'

'Sure you don't need to take a leak before you turn in?' Jonesy had four children, and this question came almost auto?matically.  

'No. I went in the woods just before you found me. Thank you for taking me in. Thank you both.'

'Ah, hell,' Beaver said, and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. 'Anybody woulda.'

'Maybe,' McCarthy said. 'And maybe not. In the Bible it says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock."' Outside, the wind gusted more fiercely yet, making Hole in the Wall shake. Jonesy waited for McCarthy to finish  -  it sounded as if he had more to say  -  but the man just swung his feet into bed and pulled the covers up.

From somewhere deep in Jonesy's bed there came another of those long, rasping farts, and Jonesy decided that was enough for him. It was one thing to let in a wayfaring stranger when he came to your door just ahead of a storm; it was another to stand around while he laid a series of gas-bombs.

The Beaver followed him out and closed the door gently behind him.

5

When Jonesy started to talk, the Beav shook his head, raised his finger to his lips, and led Jonesy across the big room to the kitchen, which was as far as they could get from McCarthy without going into the shed out back.

'Man, that guy's in a world of hurt,' Beaver said, and in the harsh glow of the kitchen's fluorescent strips, Jonesy could see just how worried his old friend was. The Beav rummaged into the wide front pocket of his overalls, found a toothpick, and began to nibble on it. In three minutes  -  the length of time it took a dedicated smoker to finish a cigarette  -  he would reduce it to a palmful of flax-fine splinters. Jonesy didn't know how the Beav's teeth stood up to it (or his stomach), but he had been doing it his whole life.