Dreamcatcher(43)

Yet a pu**y . . . not some fictional Penthouse pu**y but the actual muff of an actual girl from town . . . that would be something to see, all right. That would be a f**kin pisser.

'Tracker Brothers?' Henry says with frank disbelief They have stopped now, are standing together in a little clump not far from the building while the last of the retards go moaning and goggling by on the other side of the street. 'I think the world of you, Jonesy, don't get me wrong  -  the f**king world  -  but why would there be a picture of Tina Jean's pu**y in there?'

'I don't know,' Jonesy said, 'but Davey Trask saw it and said it was her.'

'I dunno about goin in there, man,' Beaver says. 'I mean, I'd love to see Tina Jean Slophanger's pu**y - '

'Schlossinger - '

' - but that place has been empty at least since we were in the fifth grade - '

'Beav - '

' - and I bet it's full of rats.'

'Beav - '

But Beav intends to have his entire say. 'Rats get rabies,' he says. 'They get rabies up the old wazoo.'

'We don't have to go in,' Jonesy says, and all three look at him with renewed interest. This is, as the fellow said when he saw the black-haired Swede, a Norse of a different color.

Jonesy sees he has their full attention, nods, goes on. 'Davey says all you have to do is go around on the driveway side and look in the third or fourth window. It used to be Phil and Tony Tracker's office. There's still a bulletin board on the wall. And Davey said the only two things on the bulletin board are a map of New England showing all the truck routes, and a picture of Tina jean Schlossinger showing all of her pu**y.'

They look at him with breathless interest, and Pete asks the question which has occurred to all of them. 'Is she bollocky?'

'No,' Jonesy admits. 'Davey says you can't even see her tits, but she's holding her skirt up and she isn't wearing pants and you can see it, just as clear as day.'

Pete is disappointed that this year's Tiger Homecoming Queen isn't bollocky bare-ass, but the thing about how she's holding her skirt up inflames them all, feeding some primal, semi-secret notion of how sex really works. A girl could hold her skirt up, after all; any girl could.

Not even Henry asks any more questions. The only question comes from the Beav, who asks if Jonesy is sure they won't have to go inside in order to see. And they are already moving in the direction of the driveway running down the far side of the building toward the vacant lot, powerful as a spring tide in their nearly mindless motion.

5

Pete finished the second beer and heaved the bottle deep into the woods. Feeling better now, he got cautiously to his feet and dusted the snow from his ass. And was his knee a little bit looser? He thought maybe it was. Looked awful, of course  -  looked like he had a little model of the Minnesota goddam Metrodome under there  -  but felt a bit better. Still, he walked carefully, swinging his plastic sack of beer in short arcs beside him. Now that the small but powerful voice insisting that he had to have a beer, just goddam had to, had been silenced, he thought of the woman with new solicitude, hoping she hadn't noticed he was gone. He would walk slowly, he would stop to massage his knee every five minutes or so (and maybe talk to it, encourage it, a crazy idea, but he was out here on his own and it couldn't hurt), and he would get back to the woman. Then he would have another beer. He did not look back at the overturned Scout, did not see that he had written DUDDITS in the snow, over and over again, as he sat thinking of that day back in 1978.  

Only Henry had asked why the Schlossinger girl's picture would be there in the empty office of an empty freight depot, and Pete thought now that Henry had only asked because he had to fulfill his role as Group Skeptic. Certainly he'd only asked once; as for the rest of them, they had simply believed, and why not? At thirteen, Pete had still spent half his life believing in Santa Claus. And besides -

Pete stopped near the top of the big hill, not because he was out of breath or because his leg was cramping up, but because he could suddenly feel a low humming sound in his head, sort of like an electrical transformer, only with a kind of cycling quality to it, a low thud-thud-thud. And no, it wasn't 'suddenly' as in 'suddenly started up'; he had an idea the sound had been there for awhile and he was just becoming aware of it. And he had started to think some funny stuff. All that about Henry's cologne, for instance . . . and Marcy. Someone named Marcy. He didn't think he knew anyone named Marcy but the name was suddenly in his head, as in Marcy I need you or Marcy I want you or maybe Zounds, Marcy, bring the gasogene.

He stood where he was, licking his dry lips, the bag of beer hanging straight down from his hand now, its pendulum motion stilled. He looked up in the sky, suddenly sure the lights would be there . . . and they were there, only just two of them now, and very faint.

'Tell Marcy to make them give me a shot,' Pete said, enunciating each word carefully in the stillness, and knew they were exactly the right words. Right why or right how he couldn't say, but yes, those were the words in his head. Was it the click, or had the lights caused those thoughts? Pete couldn't say for sure.

'Maybe nyther,' he said.

Pete realized the last of the snow had stopped. The world around him was only three colors: the deep gray of the sky, the deep green of the firs, and the perfect unblemished white of the new snow. And hushed.