Dreamcatcher(57)

Beav snorted laughter. Duddits with his Scooby-Doo lunchbox. Duddits on his belly, blowing the fluff off dandelions. Duddits running around in his back yard, happy as a bird in a tree, yeah, and people who called kids like him special didn't know the half of it. He had been special, all right, their present from a f**ked-up world that usually didn't give you jack-shit. Duddits had been their own special thing, and they had loved him.

5

They sit in the sunny kitchen nook  -  the clouds have gone away as if by magic  -  drinking iced tea and watching Duddits, who drank his ZaRex (awful-looking orange stuff) in three or four huge splattering gulps and then ran out back to play.

Henry does most of the talking, telling Mrs Cavell that the boys were just 'kinda pushing him around.' He says that they got a little bit rough and ripped his shirt, which scared Duddits and made him cry. There is no mention of how Richie Grenadeau and his friends took off his pants, no mention of the nasty after - school snack they wanted Duddits to eat, and when Mrs Cavell asks them if they know who these big boys were, Henry hesitates briefly and then says no, just some big boys from the high school, he didn't know any of them, hot by name. She looks at Beaver, Jonesy, and Pete; they all shake their heads. It may be wrong  -  dangerous to Duddits in the long run, as well  -  but they can't step that far outside the rules which govern their lives. Already Beaver cannot understand where they found the sack to intervene in the first place, and later the others will say the same. They marvel at their courage; they also marvel that they aren't in the f**kin hospital.

She looks at them sadly for a moment, and Beaver realizes she knows a lot of what they aren't telling, probably enough to keep her awake that night. Then she smiles. Right at Beaver she smiles, and it makes him tingle all the way down to his toes. 'What a lot of zippers you have on your jacket!' she says.

Beaver smiles. 'Yes, ma'am. It's my Fonzie jacket. It was my brother's first. These guys make fun of it, but I like it just the same.'

'Happy Days,' she says. 'We like it, too. Duddits likes it. Perhaps you'd like to come over some night and watch it with us. With him.' Her smile grows wistful, as if she knows nothing like that will ever happen.

'Yeah, that'd be okay,' Beav says.

'Actually it would,' Pete agrees.

They sit for a little without talking, just watching him play in the back yard. There's a swing - set with two swings. Duddits runs behind them, pushing them, making the swings go by themselves. Sometimes he stops, crosses his arms over his chest, turns the clockless dial of his face up to the sky, and laughs.

'Seems all right now,' Jonesy says, and drinks the last of his tea. 'Guess he's forgotten all about it.'

Mrs Cavell has started to get up. Now she sits back down, giving him an almost startled look. 'Oh no, not at all,' she says. 'He remembers. Not like you and I, perhaps, but he remembers things. He'll probably have nightmares tonight, and when we go into his room  -  his father and me  -  he won't be able to explain. That's the worst for him; he can't tell what it is he sees and thinks and feels. He doesn't have the vocabulary.'

She sighs.

'In any case, those boys won't forget about him. What if they're laying for him now? What if they're laying for you?'

'We can take care of ourselves,' Jonesy says, but although his voice is stout enough, his eyes are uneasy,

'Maybe,' she says. 'But what about Duddits? I can walk him to school  -  I used to, and I suppose I'll have to again, for awhile at least, anyway  -  but he loves to walk home on his own so much.'

'It makes him feel like a big boy,' Pete says.

She reaches across the table and touches Pete's hand, making him blush. 'That's right, it makes him feel like a big boy.'

'You know,' Henry says, 'we could walk him. We all go together to the junior high, and it would be easy enough to come down here from Kansas Street.' -

Roberta Cavell only sits there without saying anything, a little birdie-woman in a print dress, looking at Henry attentively, like someone waiting for the punchline of a joke.

'Would that be okay, Missus Cavell?' Beaver asks her. 'Because we could do it, easy. Or maybe you don't want us to.'

Something complicated happens to Mrs CaveE's face  -  there are all those little twitches, mostly under the skin. One eye almost winks, and then the other one does wink. She takes a handkerchief from her pocket and blows her nose. Beaver thinks, She's trying not to laugh at us. When he tells Henry that as they are walking home, Jonesy and Pete already dropped off, Henry will look at him with utter astonishment. Cry is what she was tryin not to do, he will say . . . and then, affectionately, after a pause: Dope.

'You would do that?' she asks, and when Henry nods for all of them, she changes the question slightly. 'Why would you do that?' Henry looks around as if to say Someone else take this one, willya?

Pete says, 'We like him, ma'am.'

Jonesy is nodding. 'I like the way he carries his lunchbox over his head - '

'Yeah, that's bitchin,' Pete says. Henry kicks him under the table. Pete replays what he just said  -  you can see him doing it ?and begins blushing furiously.

Mrs Cavell appears not to notice. She's looking at Henry with fixed intensity. 'He has to go by quarter of eight,' she says.