Dreamcatcher(93)

And then, oh God, this is new  -  the message does go through! As he reaches the corner, as he stands there on the curb, just about to step down into the crosswalk, it does go through!

'What?' he says, and the man who was stopped beside him, the first one to bend over him in a past which now may be blessedly canceled, looks at him suspiciously and says 'I didn't say anything,' as though there might be a third with them. Jonesy barely hears him because there is a third, there is a voice inside him, one which sounds suspiciously like his own, and it's screaming at him to stay on the curb, to stay out of the street -

Then he hears someone crying. He looks across to the far side of Prospect and oh God, Duddits is there, Duddits Cavell naked except for his Underoos, and there is brown stuff smeared all around his mouth. It looks like chocolate, but Jonesy knows better. It's dogshit, that bastard Richie made him eat it after all, and people over there are walking back and forth regardless, ignoring him, as if Duddits wasn't there.

'Duddits!' Jonesy calls. 'Duddits, hang on, man, I'm coming!'

And he plunges into the street without looking, the passenger inside helpless to do anything but ride along, understanding at last that this was exactly how and why the accident happened  -  the old man, yes, the old man with early-stage Alzheimer's who had no business behind the wheel of a car in the first place, but that had only been part of it. The other part, concealed in the blackness surrounding the crash until now, was this: he had seen Duddits and had simply bolted, forgetting to look.

He glimpses something more, as well: some huge pattern, something like a dreamcatcher that binds all the years since they first met Duddits Cavell in 1978, something that binds the future as well.

Sunlight twinkles on a windshield; he sees this in the comer of his left eye. A car coming, and too fast. The man who was beside him on the curb, old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything, cries out: 'Watch it, guy, watch it!' but Jonesy barely hears him. Because there is a deer on the sidewalk behind Duddits, a fine big buck, almost as big as a man. Then, just before the Town Car strikes him, Jonesy sees the deer is a man, a man in an orange cap and an orange flagman's vest. On his shoulder, like a hideous mascot, is a legless weasel-thing with enormous black eyes. Its tail  -  or maybe it's a tentacle  -  is curled around the man's neck. How in God's name could I have thought he was a deer? Jonesy thinks, and then the Lincoln strikes him and he is knocked into the street. He hears a bitter, muffled snap as his hip breaks.

2

There is no darkness, not this time; for better or worse, arc-sodiums have been installed on Memory Lane. Yet the film is confused, as if the editor took a few too many drinks at lunch and forgot just how the story was supposed to go. Part of this has to do with the strange way time has been twisted out of shape: he seems to be living in the past, present, and future all at the same time.

This is how we travel, a voice says, and Jonesy realizes it is the voice he heard weeping for Marcy, for a shot. Once acceleration passes a certain point, all travel becomes time travel. Memory is the basis of every journey.

The man on the corner, old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything, bends over him, asks if he's all right, sees that he isn't, then looks up and says, 'Who's got a cell phone? This guy needs an ambulance.' When he raises his head, Jonesy sees there's a little cut under the guy's chin, old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything probably did it that morning without even realizing it. That's sweet, Jonesy thinks, then the film jumps and here's an old dude in a rusty black topcoat and a fedora hat  -  call this elderly dickweed old Mr What'd-l-Do. He's wandering around asking people that. He says he looked away for a moment and felt a thump  -  what'd I do? He says he has never liked a big car ?what'd I do? He says he can't remember the name of the insurance company, but they call themselves the Good Hands People  -  what'd I do? There is a stain on the crotch of his trousers, and as Jonesy lies there in the street he can't help feeling a kind of exasperated pity for the old geezer  -  wishes he could tell him You want to know what you did, take a look at your pants. You did Number One, Q - E - f**kin - D.

The film jumps again. Now there are even more people gathered around him. They look very tall and Jonesy thinks it's like having a coffin's-eye view of a funeral. That makes him remember a Ray Bradbury story, he thinks it's called 'The Crowd,' where the people who gather at accident sites  -  always the same ones ?determine your fate by what they say. If they stand around you murmuring that it isn't so bad, he's lucky the car swerved at the last second, you'll be okay. If, on the other hand, the people who make up the crowd start saying things like He looks bad or I don't think he's going to make it, you'll die. Always the same people. Always the same empty, avid faces. The lookie-loos who just have to see the blood and hear the groans of the injured.

In the cluster surrounding him, just behind old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything, Jonesy sees Duddits Cavell, now fully dressed and looking okay  -  no dogshit mustache, in other words. McCarthy is there, too. Call him old Mr I-Stand-at-the-Door-and-Knock, Jonesy thinks. And someone else, as well. A gray man. Only he's not a man at all, not really; he's the alien that was standing behind him while Jonesy was at the bathroom door. Huge black eyes dominate a face which is otherwise almost featureless. The saggy dewlapping elephant's skin is tighter here; old Mr ET-Phone-Home hasn't started to succumb to the environment yet. But he will. In the end, this world will dissolve him like acid.