Dreamcatcher(38)

'Lady,' he said for the third time.

Nothing.

She'd said that Pick was the only one left, and then she'd said They're back, presumably meaning the lights in the sky, and since then there had been nothing but those unpleasant burps and farts . . . the one yawn, exposing all those missing teeth . . . and the eye. The creepy  jackalope eye. Henry had only been gone fifteen minutes ?he'd left at five past twelve and it was now twelve-twenty by Pete's watch  -  and it felt like an hour and a half This was going to be one long f**king day, and if he was going to get through it without cracking up (he kept thinking of some story they'd had to read in the eighth grade, he couldn't remember who wrote it, only that the guy in the story had killed this old man because he couldn't stand the old man's eye, and at the time Pete hadn't understood that but now he did, yessir), he needed something.

'Lady, do you hear me?'

Nada. Just the creepy jackalope eye.

'I have to go back to the car because I kind of forgot something. But you'll be all right. Won't you?'

No answer  -  and then she let loose with another of those long buzz-saw farts, her face wrinkling up as she let go, as if it hurt her . . . and probably it did, something that sounded like that just about had to hurt. And even though Pete had been careful to get upwind, some of the smell came to him  -  hot and rank but somehow not human. Nor did it smell like cow-farts. He had worked for Lionel Sylvester as a kid, he'd milked more than his share of cows, and sometimes they blew gas at you while you were on the stool, sure  -  a heavy green smell, a marshy smell. This wasn't like that, not a bit. This was like . . . well, like when you were a kid and got your first chemistry set, and after awhile you got tired of the faggy little experiments in the booklet and just went hogwild and mixed all that shit together, just to see if it would explode. And, he realized, that was part of what was troubling him, part of what was making him nervous. Except that was stupid. People didn't just explode, did they? Still, he had to get him a little help here. Because she was giving him the Willies, bigtime.

He got two of the pieces of wood Henry had scrounged, added them to the fire, debated, and added a third. Sparks rose, whirling, and winked out against the sloping piece of corrugated tin. 'I'll be back before that all burns down, but if you want to add on another, be my guest. Okay?'

Nothing. He suddenly felt like shaking her, but he had a mile and a half to walk, up to the Scout and back here again, and he had to save his strength. Besides, she'd probably fart again. Or burp right in his face.

'Okay,' he said. 'Silence gives consent, that's what Mrs White always used to say back in the fourth grade.'

He got to his feet, bracing his knee as he did so, grimacing and slipping, almost falling, but finally getting up because he needed that beer, goddammit, needed it, and there was no one to get it except for him, Probably he was an alcoholic. In fact, there was no probably about it, and he supposed eventually he'd have to do something about it, but for now he was on his own, wasn't he? Yes, because this bitch was gone, nothing left of her but some nasty gas and that creepy jackalope eye. If she needed to put some more wood on the fire she'd just have to do it, but she wouldn't need to, he'd be back long before then. It was only a mile and a half. Surely his leg would hold him that long.

'I'll be back,' he said. He leaned over and massaged his knee. Stiff, but not too bad. Really not too bad. He'd just put the beer in a bag  -  maybe a box of Hi Ho crackers for the bitch while he was at it  -  and be right back. 'You sure you're okay?'

Nothing. Just the eye.

'Silence gives consent,' he repeated, and began walking back up the Deep Cut Road, following the wide drag-mark of the tarpaulin and their almost-filled-in tracks. He walked in little hitches, pausing to rest every ten or twelve steps . . . and to massage his knee. He stopped once to look back at the fire. It already looked small and insubstantial in the gray early afternoon light. 'This is f**kin crazy,' he said once, but he kept on going.

2

He got to the end of the straight stretch all right, and halfway up the hill all right. He was just starting to walk a little faster, to trust the knee a little when  -  ha-ha, ass**le, fooled ya  -  it locked again, turning to something that felt like pig-iron, and he went down, yelling squeezed curses through his clenched teeth.

It was as he sat there cursing in the snow that he realized something very odd was going on out here. A large buck went walking past him on the left, with no more than a quick glance at the human from which it would have fled in great, springy bounds on any other day. Running along almost under its feet was a red squirrel.

Pete sat there in the lessening snow  -  huge flakes falling in a shifting wave that looked like lace  -  with his leg stuck out in front of him and his mouth open. There were more deer coming along the road, other animals, too, walking and hopping like refugees fleeing some disaster. There were even more of them in the woods, a wave moving east.

'Where you guys going?' he asked a snowshoe rabbit that went lolloping past him with its ears laid along its back. 'Big coverall game at the rez? Casting call for a new Disney cartoon? Got a - '

He broke off, the spit in his mouth drying up to something that felt like an electric mist. A black bear, fat with its pre-hibernation stuffing, was ambling through the screen of thin second-growth trees to his left. It went with its head down and its rump switching from side to side, and although it never spared Pete so much as a look, Pete's illusions about his place here in the big north woods were for the first time entirely stripped away. He was nothing but a heap of tasty white meat that happened to still be breathing. Without his rifle, he was more defenseless than the squirrel he'd seen scurrying around the buck's feet  -  if noticed by a bear, the squirrel could at least run up the nearest tree, all the way to the thin top branches where no bear could possibly follow. The fact that this bear never so much as looked at him didn't make Pete feel much better. Where there was one, there would be more, and the next one might not be so preoccupied.