Dreamcatcher

  He didn't exactly freak, but he wiggled back out faster than he'd wiggled in, and his knee locked up again just as he got entirely clear. He rolled over on his back, whimpering, looking up into the snow--the last of it, now coming down in great big flakes as lacy as a woman's best underwear--and massaging the knee, telling it to come on, now, honey, come on now, sweetie, let go, you fucking bitch. And just as he was starting to think that this time it wouldn't, it did. He hissed through his teeth, sat up, and looked at the bag with THANKS FOR SHOPPING AT OUR PLACE! printed on the side in red.

  "Where else would I shop, you old bastard?" he asked. He decided to allow himself one beer after all before starting back to the woman. Hell, it would lighten the load.

  Pete fished one out, twisted the cap, and poured the top half down his throat in four big gulps. It was cold and the snow he was sitting in was even colder, but he still felt better. That was the magic of beer. The magic of Scotch, vodka, and gin as well, but when it came to alcohol, he was with Tom T. Hall: he liked beer.

  Looking at the bag, he thought again of the carrot-top back in the store--the mystified grin, the Chinese eyes that had originally earned such people the term mongoloids, as in mongoloid idiot. That led him to Duddits again, Douglas Cavell if you wanted to be formal about it. Why Duds had been on his mind so much lately Pete couldn't say, but he had, and Pete made himself a promise: when this was over, he was going to stop in Derry and see old Duddits. He'd make the others go with him, and somehow he didn't think he'd have to try very hard to convince them. Duddits was probably the reason they were still friends after so many years. Hell, most kids never so much as thought of their college or high-school buddies again, let alone those they'd chummed with in junior high . . . what was now known as middle school, although Pete had no doubt it was the same sad jungle of insecurities, confusion, smelly armpits, crazy fads, and half-baked ideas. They hadn't known Duddits from school, of course, because Duddits didn't go to Derry Junior High. Duds went to The Mary M. Snowe School for the Exceptional, which was known to the neighborhood kids as The Retard Academy or sometimes just The Dumb School. In the ordinary course of events their paths never would have crossed, but there was this vacant lot out on Kansas Street, and the abandoned brick building that went with it. Facing the street you could still read TRACKER BROTHERS SHIPPING TRUCKING AND STORAGE in fading white paint on the old red brick. And on the other side, in the big alcove where the trucks had once backed up to unload . . . something else was painted there.

  Now, sitting in the snow but no longer feeling it melting to cold slush under his ass, drinking his second beer without even being aware he had opened it (the first empty he had cast into the woods where he could still see animals moving east), Pete remembered the day they had met Duds. He remembered Beaver's stupid jacket that the Beav had loved so much, and Beaver's voice, thin but somehow powerful, announcing the end of something and the beginning of something else, announcing in some ungraspable but perfectly real and knowable way that the course of their lives had changed one Tuesday afternoon when all they had been planning was some two-on-two in Jonesy's driveway and then maybe a game of Parcheesi in front of the TV; now, sitting here in the woods beside the overturned Scout, still smelling the cologne Henry hadn't been wearing, drinking his life's happy poison with a hand wearing a bloodstained glove, the car salesman remembered the boy who had not quite given up his dreams of being an astronaut in spite of his increasing problems with math (Jonesy had helped him, and then Henry had helped him and then, in tenth grade, he'd been beyond help), and he remembered the other boys as well, mostly the Beav, who had turned the world upside down with a high yell in his just-beginning-to-change voice: Hey you guys, quit it! Just fucking QUIT it!

  "Beaver," Pete said, and toasted the dark afternoon as he sat with his back propped against the overturned Scout's hood. "You were beautiful, man." But hadn't they all been?

  Hadn't they all been beautiful?

  4

  Because he is in the eighth grade and his last class of the day is music, on the ground floor, Pete is always out before his three best friends, who always finish the day on the second floor, Jonesy and Henry in American Fiction, which is a reading class for smart kids, and Beaver next door in Math for Living, which is actually Math for Stupid Boys and Girls. Pete is fighting hard not to have to take that one next year, but he thinks it's a fight he will ultimately lose. He can add, subtract, multiply, and divide; he can do fractions, too, although it takes him too much time. But now there is something new, now there is the x. Pete does not understand the x, and fears it.

  He stands outside the gate by the chainlink fence as the rest of the eighth-graders and the babyass seventh-graders stream by, stands there kicking his boots and pretending to smoke, one hand cupped to his mouth and the other concealed beneath it--the concealed hand the one with the hypothetical hidden butt.

  And now here come the ninth-graders from the second floor, and walking among them like royalty--like uncrowned kings, almost, although Pete would never say such a corny thing out loud--are his friends, Jonesy and Beaver and Henry. And if there is a king of kings it is Henry, whom all the girls love even if he does wear glasses. Pete is lucky to have such friends, and he knows it--is probably the luckiest eighth-grader in Derry, x or no x. The fact that having friends in the ninth grade keeps him from getting beaten up by any of the eighth-grade badasses is the very least of it.

  "Hey, Pete!" Henry says as the three of them come sauntering out through the gate. As always, Henry seems surprised to see him there, but absolutely delighted. "What you up to, my man?"

  "Nothin much," Pete replies as always. "What's up with you?"

  "SSDD," Henry says, whipping off his glasses and giving them a polish. If they had been a club, SSDD likely would have been their motto; eventually they will even teach Duddits to say it--it came out Say shih, iffa deh in Duddits-ese, and is one of the few things Duddits says that his parents can't understand. This of course will delight Pete and his friends.

  Now, however, with Duddits still half an hour in their future, Pete just echoes Henry: "Yeah, man, SSDD."

  Same shit, different day. Except in their hearts, the boys only believe the first half, because in their hearts they believe it's the same day, day after day. It's Derry, it's 1978, and it will always be 1978. They say there will be a future, that they will live to see the twenty-first century--Henry will be a lawyer, Jonesy will be a writer, Beaver will be a long-haul truck-driver, Pete will be an astronaut with a NASA patch on his shoulder--but this is just what they say, as they chant the Apostle's Creed in church with no real idea of what's coming out of their mouths; what they're really interested in is Maureen Chessman's skirt, which was short to begin with and has ridden a pretty good way up her thighs as she shifted around. They believe in their hearts that one day Maureen's skirt will ride up high enough for them to see the color of her panties, and they similarly believe that Derry is forever and so are they. It will always be junior high school and quarter of three, they will always be walking up Kansas Street together to play basketball in Jonesy's driveway (Pete also has a hoop in his driveway but they like Jonesy's better because his father has posted it low enough so you can dunk), talking about the same old things: classes and teachers and which kid got into a fuckin pisser with which kid, or which kid is going to get into a fuckin pisser with which kid, whether or not so-and-so could take so-and-so if they got into a fuckin pisser (except they never will because so-and-so and so-and-so are tight), who did something gross lately (their favorite so far this year has to do with a seventh-grader named Norm Parmeleau, now known as Macaroni Parmeleau, a nickname that will pursue him for years, even into the new century of which these boys speak but do not in their hearts actually believe; to win a fifty-cent bet, Norm Parmeleau had one day in the cafeteria firmly plugged both nostrils with macaroni and cheese, then hawked it back like snot and swallowed it; Macaroni Parmeleau who, like so many junior-high-school kids, has mistaken notoriety for ce
lebrity), who is going out with whom (if a girl and a guy are observed going home together after school, they are presumed to be probably going out; if they are observed hangin onto hands or suckin face it is a certainty), who is going to win the Super Bowl (fuckin Patriots, fuckin Boston Patriots, only they never do, having to root for the Patriots is a fuckin pisser). All these topics are the same and yet endlessly fascinating as they walk from the same school (I believe in God the father almighty) on the same street (maker of heaven and earth) under the same white everlasting October sky (world without end) with the same friends (amen). Same shit, same day, that is the truth in their hearts, and they're down with K.C. and the Sunshine Band on this one, even though they will all tell you RIR-DS (rock is rolling, disco sucks): that's the way they like it. Change will come upon them sudden and unannounced, as it always does with children of this age; if change needed permission from junior-high-school students, it would cease to exist.

  Today they also have hunting to talk about, because next month Mr. Clarendon is for the first time going to take them up to Hole in the Wall. They'll be gone for three days, two of them school-days (there is no problem getting permission for this trip from the school, and absolutely no need to lie about the trip's purpose; southern Maine may have gotten citified, but up here in God's country, hunting is still considered part of a young person's education, especially if the young person is a boy). The idea of creeping through the woods with loaded rifles while their friends are back at dear old DJHS, just droning away, strikes them as incredibly, delightfully boss, and they walk past The Retard Academy on the other side of the street without even seeing it. The retards get out at the same time as the kids at Derry Junior High, but most of them go home with their mothers on the special retard bus, which is blue instead of yellow and is reputed to have a bumper sticker on it that says SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH OR I'LL KILL YOU. As Henry, Beaver, Jonesy, and Pete walk past Mary M. Snowe on the other side, a few high-functioning retards who are allowed to go home by themselves are still walking along, goggling around themselves with those weird expressions of perpetual wonder. Pete and his friends see them without seeing them, as always. They are just part of the world's wallpaper.

  Henry, Jonesy, and Pete are listening closely to the Beav, who's telling them that when they get to Hole in the Wall they have to get down in The Gulch, because that's where the big ones always go, there's bushes down there that they like. "Me and my Dad have seen about a billion deer in there," he says. The zippers on his old motorcycle jacket jingle agreeably.

  They argue about who's going to get the biggest deer and where is the best place to shoot one so you can bring it down with one shot and it won't suffer. ("Except my father says that animals don't suffer the way people do when they get hurt," Jonesy tells them. "He says God made them different that way so it would be okay for us to hunt them.") They laugh and squabble and argue over who is the most likely to blow lunch when it comes time to gut their kills, and The Retard Academy falls farther and farther behind. Ahead of them, on their side of the street, looms the square red brick building where Tracker Brothers used to do business.

  "If anyone hurls, it won't be me," Beaver boasts. "I seen deerguts a thousand times and they don't bother me at all. I remember once--"

  "Hey you guys," Jonesy breaks in, suddenly excited. "You want to see Tina Jean Schlossinger's pussy?"

  "Who's Tina Jean Sloppinger?" Pete asks, but he is already intrigued. Seeing any pussy seems like a great idea to him; he is always looking at his Dad's Penthouse and Playboy magazines, which his Dad keeps out in his workshop, behind the big Craftsman toolbox. Pussy is very interesting. It doesn't give him a boner and make him feel sexy the way bare tits do, but he guesses that's because he's still a kid.

  And pussy is interesting.

  "Schlossinger," Jonesy says, laughing. "Schlossinger, Petesky. The Schlossingers live two blocks over from me, and--" He stops suddenly, struck by an important question which must be answered immediately. He turns to Henry. "Are the Schlossingers Jews or Republicans?"

  Now it's Henry laughing at Jonesy, but without any malice. "Technically, I think it's possible to be both at the same time . . . or neither one." Henry pronounces the word nyther instead of neether, which impresses Pete. It sounds smart as a motherfucker, and he reminds himself to say it that way from now on--nyther, nyther, nyther, he tells himself . . . but knows somehow that he will forget, that he is one of those people condemned to say neether all his life.

  "Never mind religion and politics," Henry says, still laughing. "If you've got a picture of Tina Jean Schlossinger showing her pussy, I want to see it."

  The Beav, meanwhile, has become visibly excited--cheeks flushed, eyes bright, and he goes to stick a fresh toothpick in his mouth before the old one is even half finished. The zippers on his jacket, the one Beaver's older brother wore during his four or five years of Fonzie-worship, jingle faster.

  "Is she blonde?" the Beav asks. "Blonde, and in high school? Super good-looking? Got--" He holds his hands out in front of his chest, and when Jonesy nods, grinning, Beaver turns to Pete and blurts: "This year's Homecoming Queen up at the high school, ringmeat! Her picture was in the fuckin paper! Up on that float with Richie Grenadeau?"

  "Yes, but the fucking Tigers lost the Homecoming game and Grenadeau ended up with a broken nose," Henry says. "First Derry High team ever to play a Class-A team from southern Maine and those fools--"

  "Fuck the Tigers," Pete breaks in. He has more interest in high school football than he does in the dreaded x, but not much. Anyway, he's got the girl placed now, remembers the newspaper photo of her standing on the flower-decked bed of a pulp truck next to the Tiger quarterback, both of them wearing tinfoil crowns, smiling, and waving to the crowd. The girl's hair fell around her face in big blowy Farrah Fawcett waves, and her gown was strapless, showing the tops of her breasts.

  For the first time in his life, Pete feels real lust--it is a meaty feeling, red and heavy, that stiffens his prick, dries up the spit in his mouth, and makes it hard for him to think. Pussy is interesting; the idea of seeing local pussy, Homecoming Queen pussy . . . that is a lot more than exciting. That is, as the Derry News's film critic sometimes says about movies she especially likes, "a must-see."

  "Where?" he asks Jonesy breathlessly. He is imagining seeing this girl, this Tina Jean Schlossinger, waiting on the corner for the school bus, just standing there giggling with her girlfriends, not having the slightest idea that the boy walking past has seen what is under her skirt or her jeans, that he knows if the hair on her pussy is the same color as the hair on her head. Pete is on fire. "Where is it?"

  "There," Jonesy says, and points at the red brick box that is Tracker Brothers old freight and storage depot. There is ivy crawling up the sides, but this has been a cold fall and most of the leaves have already died and turned black. Some of the windows are broken and the rest are bleary. Looking at the place gives Pete a little chill. Partly because the big kids, the high-school kids and even some that are beyond high school, play baseball in the vacant lot behind the building, and big kids like to beat up little kids, who knows why, it relieved the monotony or something. But this isn't the big deal, because baseball is over for the year and the big kids have probably moved on to Strawford Park, where they will play two-hand touch football until the snow flies. (Once the snow flies, they will beat each others' brains in playing hockey with old friction-taped sticks.) No, the big deal is that kids sometimes disappear in Derry, Derry is funny that way, and when they do disappear, they are often last seen in out-of-the-way places like the deserted Tracker Brothers depot. No one talks about this unpleasant fact, but everyone knows about it.

  Yet a pussy . . . not some fictional Penthouse pussy but the actual muff of an actual girl from town . . . that would be something to see, all right. That would be a fuckin 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 fucking world--but why would there be a picture of Tina Jean's pussy 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 pussy--"

  "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 pussy."

  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.