Dreamcatcher(24)

'Huh?' Beaver's mouth opened. The toothpick hung from his lower lip. Then, very slowly, he nodded. 'Yeah. All he's got is stubble.'

'I'd say less than a day's growth.'

'I guess he was shavin, huh?'

'Right,' Jonesy said, picturing McCarthy lost in the woods, scared and cold and hungry (not that he looked like he'd missed many meals, that was another thing), but still kneeling by a stream every morning, breaking the ice with a booted foot so he could get to the water beneath, then taking his trusty Gillette from . . . where? His coat pocket?

'And then this morning he lost his razor, which is why he's got the stubble,' the Beav said. He was smiling again, but there didn't seem to be a lot of humor in it.

'Yeah. Same time he lost his gun. Did you see his teeth?'

Beaver made a what-now grimace.

'Four gone. Two on top, two on the bottom. He looks like the What-me-worry kid that's always on the front of Mad magazine.'

'Not a big deal, buddy. I've got a couple of AWOL choppers myself.' Beaver hooked back one comer of his mouth, baring his left gum in a one-sided grin Jonesy could have done without. 'Eee? Ight ack ere.'

Jonesy shook his head. It wasn't the same. 'The guy's a lawyer, Beav  -  he's out in public all the time, his looks are part of his living. And these babies are right out in front. He didn't know they were gone. I'd swear to it.'

'You don't suppose he got exposed to radiation or something, do you?' Beaver asked uneasily. 'Your teeth fall out when you get f**kin radiation poisonin, I saw that in a movie one time. One of the ones you're always watching, those monster shows. You don't suppose it's that, do you? Maybe he got that red mark the same time.'

'Yeah, he got a dose when the Mars Hill Nuclear Power Plant blew up,' Jonesy said, and Beaver's puzzled expression made him immediately sorry for the crack. 'Beav, when you get radiation poisoning, I think your hair falls out, too.'

The Beaver's face cleared. 'Yeah, that's right. The guy in the movie ended up as bald as Telly what's-his-f*ck, used to play that cop on TV.' He paused. 'Then the guy died. The one in the movie, I mean, not Telly, although now that I think of it - '

'This guy's got plenty of hair,' Jonesy interrupted. Let Beaver get off on a tangent and they would likely never get back to the point. He noticed that, out of the stranger's presence, neither of them called him Rick, or even McCarthy. Just 'the guy,' as if they subconsciously wanted to turn him into something less important than a man  -  something generic, as if that would make it matter less if . . . well, if.

'Yeah,' Beaver said. 'He does, doesn't he? Plenty of hair.'

'He must have amnesia.'

'Maybe, but he remembers who he is, who he was with, shit like that. Man, that was some trumpet - blast he blew, wasn't it? And the stink! Like ether!'

'Yeah,' Jonesy said. 'I kept thinking of starter fluid. Diabetics get a smell when they're tipping over. I read that in a mystery novel, I think.'

'Is it like starter fluid?'

'I can't remember.'

They stood there looking at each other, listening to the wind. It crossed Jonesy's mind to tell Beaver about the lightning the guy claimed to have seen, but why bother? Enough was enough.

'I thought he was going to blow his cookies when he leaned forward like that,' the Beav said. 'Didn't you?'

Jonesy nodded.

'And he don't look well, not at all well.'

'No.'

Beaver sighed, tossed his toothpick in the trash, and looked out the window, where the snow was coming down harder and heavier than ever. He flicked his fingers through his hair. 'Man, I wish Henry and Pete were here. Henry especially.'

'Beav, Henry's a psychiatrist.'

'I know, but he's the closest thing to a doctor we got  -  and I think that fellow needs doctoring.'

Henry actually was a physician  -  had to be, in order to get his certificate of shrinkology  -  but he'd never practiced anything except psychiatry, as far as Jonesy knew. Still, he understood what Beaver meant.

'Do you still think they'll make it back, Beav?'

Beaver sighed. 'Half an hour ago I would have said for sure, but it's really comin heavy. I think so.' He looked at Jonesy somberly; there was not much of the usually happy-go-lucky Beaver Clarendon in that look. 'I hope so,' he said.

PART ONE CANCER CHAPTER THREE

HENRY'S SCOUT

1

Now, as he followed the Scout's headlights through the thickening snow, burrowing as if through a tunnel along the Deep Cut Road toward Hole in the Wall, Henry was down to thinking about ways to do it.

There was the Hemingway Solution, of course  -  way back at Harvard, as an undergraduate, he had written a paper calling it that, so he might have been thinking about it  -  in a personal way, not just as another step toward fulfilling some twinky course requirement, that was  -  even then. The Hemingway Solution was a shotgun, and Henry had one of those now . . . not that he would do it here, with the others. The four of them had had a lot of fine times at Hole in the Wall, and it would be unfair to do it there. It would pollute the place for Pete and Jonesy  -  for Beaver too, maybe Beaver most of all, and that wouldn't be right. But it would be soon, he could feel it coming on, something like a sneeze. Funny to compare the ending of your life to a sneeze, but that was probably what it came to. Just kerchoo, and then hello darkness, my old friend.