Dreamcatcher

  Henry ran a hand down his face, drew in a deep breath, and let it out. "I know where we're going and what we have to do--"

  "Well, good--"

  "--but I have to tell you a story so you'll understand."

  Owen glanced at him. "Do you understand?"

  "Not everything, but more than I did."

  "Go ahead. We've got an hour before Derry. Is that time enough?"

  Henry thought it would be more than enough, especially talking mind to mind. He started at the beginning--what he now understood the beginning to be. Not the coming of the grays, not the byrus or the weasels, but four boys who had been hoping to see a picture of the Homecoming Queen with her skirt pulled up, no more than that. As Owen drove, his mind filled with a series of connected images, more like a dream than a movie. Henry told him about Duddits, about their first trip to Hole in the Wall, and Beaver puking in the snow. He told Owen about all those walks to school, and about the Duddits version of the game: they played and Duddits pegged. About the time they had taken Duddits to see Santa Claus--what a fuckin pisser that had been. And about how they had seen Josie Rinkenhauer's picture on the DERRY DOIN'S board the day before the three older boys graduated. Owen saw them going to Dudditses' house on Maple Lane in Henry's car, the gowns and mortarboard caps piled in back; saw them saying hi to Mr. and Mrs. Cavell, who were in the living room with an ashy-pale man in a Derry Gas coverall and a weeping woman--Roberta Cavell has her arm around Ellen Rinkenhauer's shoulders and is telling her it will be all right, she knows that God won't let anything happen to dear little Josie.

  It's strong, Owen thought dreamily. Man, what this guy's got is so strong. How can that be?

  The Cavells barely look at the boys, because the boys are such frequent visitors here at 19 Maple Lane, and the Rinkenhauers are too deep in their terror to even notice them. They have not touched the coffee Roberta has served. He's in his room, guys, Alfie Cavell says, giving them a wan smile. And Duddits, looking up at them from his GI Joe figures--he has all of them--gets up as soon as he sees them in the doorway. Duddits never wears his shoes in his room, always his bunny slippers that Henry gave him for his last birthday--he loves the bunny slippers, will wear them until they are nothing but pink rags held together with strapping tape--but his shoes are on now. He has been waiting for them, and although his smile is as sunny as ever, his eyes are serious. Eh ee own? Duddits asks--Where we goin? And--

  "You were all that way?" Owen whispered. He supposed Henry had already told him that, but until now he hadn't understood what Henry meant. "Even before this?" He touched the side of his face, where a thin fuzz of byrus was now growing down his cheek.

  "Yes. No. I don't know. Just be quiet, Owen. Listen." And Owen's head once more filled up with those images from 1982.

  12

  By the time they get to Strawford Park it's four-thirty and a bunch of girls in yellow DERRY HARDWARE shirts are on the softball field, all of them with their hair in near-identical ponytails that have been threaded through the backs of their caps. Most have braces on their teeth. "My, my--they flubbin and dubbin," Pete says, and maybe they are, but they sure look like they're having fun. Henry is having no fun at all, his stomach is full of butterflies, and he's glad to see Jonesy at least looks the same, solemn and scared. Pete and Beaver don't have a whole lot of imagination between them; he and old Gariella have too much. To Pete and the Beav, this is just Frank and Joe Hardy stuff, Danny Dunn stuff. But to Henry it's different. To not find Josie Rinkenhauer would be bad (because they could, he knows they could), but to find her dead . . .

  "Beav," he says.

  Beaver has been watching the girls. Now he turns to Henry. "What?"

  "Do you still think she's alive?"

  "I . . ." Beav's smile fades, and he looks troubled. "I dunno, man. Pete?"

  But Pete shakes his head. "I thought she was, back at school--shit, that picture almost talked to me--but now . . ." He shrugs.

  Henry looks at Jonesy, who also shrugs, then spreads his hands: Dunno. So Henry turns to Duddits.

  Duddits is looking at everything from behind what he calls his ooo ays, Duddits-ese for cool shades--wraparounds with silver mirrored surfaces. Henry thinks the ooo ays make Duddits look like Ray Walston in My Favorite Martian, but he'd never say such a thing to Duds, or think it at him. Duds is also wearing Beaver's mortarboard hat; he particularly likes to blow the tassel.

  Duddits has no selective perception; to him the wino looking for returnables over by the trash barrels, the girls playing softball, and the squirrels running around on the branches of the trees are equally fascinating. It is part of what makes him special. "Duddits," Henry says. "There's this girl you went to school with at the Academy, her name was Josie? Josie Rinkenhauer?"

  Duddits looks politely interested because his friend Henry is talking to him, but there is no recognition of the name, and why would there be? Duds can't remember what he had for breakfast, so why would he remember a little girl he went to school with three or four years ago? Henry feels a wave of hopelessness, which is strangely mixed with amusement. What were they thinking about?

  "Josie," Pete says, but he doesn't look very hopeful, either. "We used to tease you about how she was your girlfriend, remember? She had brown eyes . . . all this blond hair sticking out from her head . . . and . . ." He sighs disgustedly. "Fuck."

  "Ay ih, iffun-nay," Duddits says, because this usually makes them smile: same shit, different day. It doesn't work, so Duddits tries another one: "No-wounce, no-lay."

  "Yeah," Jonesy said. "No bounce, no play, that's right. We might as well take him home, guys, this isn't gonna--"

  "No," Beaver says, and they all look at him. Beaver's eyes are both bright and troubled. He's chewing on the toothpick in his mouth so fast and hard that it jitters up and down between his lips like a piston. "Dreamcatcher," he says.

  13

  "Dreamcatcher?" Owen asked. His voice seemed to come from far away, even to his own ears. The Humvee's headlights conned the endless snowy wasteland ahead, which resembled a road only because of the marching yellow reflectors. Dreamcatcher, he thought, and once more his head filled up with Henry's past, almost drowning him in the sights and sounds and smells of that day on the edge of summer:

  Dreamcatcher.

  14

  "Dreamcatcher," Beav says, and they understand each other as they sometimes do, as they think (mistakenly, Henry will later realize) all friends do. Although they have never spoken directly of the dream they all shared on their first hunting trip to Hole in the Wall, they know Beaver believed that it had somehow been caused by Lamar's dreamcatcher. None of the others have tried to tell him differently, partly because they don't want to challenge Beaver's superstition about that harmless little string spiderweb and mostly because they don't want to talk about that day at all. But now they understand that Beaver has latched onto at least half a truth. A dreamcatcher has indeed bound them, but not Lamar's.

  Duddits is their dreamcatcher.

  "Come on," Beaver says quietly. "Come on, you guys, don't be afraid. Grab hold of him."

  And so they do, although they are afraid--a little anyway; Beaver, too.

  Jonesy takes Duddits's right hand, which has become so clever with machinery out there at Voke. Duddits looks surprised, then smiles and closes his fingers over Jonesy's. Pete takes Duddits's left hand. Beaver and Henry crowd in and slip their arms around Duddits's waist.

  And so the five of them stand beneath one of Strawford Park's vast old oaks, with a lace of Junelight and shadows dappling their faces. They are like boys in a huddle before some big game. The softball girls in their bright yellow shirts ignore them; so do the squirrels; so does the industrious wino, who is putting together a bottle of dinner one empty soda-can at a time.

  Henry feels the light steal into him and understands that the light is his friends and himself; they make it together, that lovely lace of light and green shadow, and of them all, Duddits shines brightest. He is their ball;
without him there is no bounce, there is no play. He is their dreamcatcher, he makes them one. Henry's heart fills up as it never will again (and the void of that lack will grow and darken as the years pile up around him), and he thinks: Is it to find one lost retarded girl who probably matters to no one but her parents? Was it to kill one brainless bully-boy, joining together to somehow make him drive off the road, doing it, oh for God's sake doing it in our sleep? Can that be all? Something so great, something so wondrous, for such tiny matters? Can that be all?

  Because if it is--he thinks this even in the ecstasy of their joining--then what is the use? What can anything possibly mean?

  Then that and all thought is swept away by the force of the experience. The face of Josie Rinkenhauer rises in front of them, a shifting image that is composed first of four perceptions and memories . . . then a fifth, as Duddits understands who it is they're making all this fuss about.

  When Duddits weighs in, the image grows a hundred times brighter, a hundred times sharper. Henry hears someone--Jonesy--gasp, and he would gasp himself, if he had the breath to do so. Because Duddits may be retarded in some ways, but not in this way; in this way, they are the poor stumbling enfeebled idiots and Duddits is the genius.

  "Oh my God," Henry hears Beaver cry, and in his voice there are equal parts ecstasy and dismay.

  Because Josie is standing here with them. Their differing perceptions of her age have turned her into a child of about twelve, older than she was when they first encountered her waiting outside The Retard Academy, surely younger than she must be now. They have settled on a sailor dress with an unsteady color that cycles from blue to pink to red to pink to blue again. She is holding the great big plastic purse with BarbieKen peeking out the top and her knees are splendidly scabby. Ladybug earrings appear and disappear below her lobes and Henry thinks Oh yeah, I remember those and then they steady into the mix.

  She opens her mouth and says, Hi, Duddie. Looks around and says, Hi, you guys.

  Then, just like that, she's gone. Just like that they are five instead of six, five big boys standing under the old oak with June's ancient light printing their faces and the excited cries of the softball girls in their ears. Pete is crying. So is Jonesy. The wino is gone--he's apparently collected enough for his bottle--but another man has come, a solemn man dressed in a winter parka in spite of the day's warmth. His left cheek is covered with red stuff that could be a birthmark, except Henry knows it isn't. It's byrus. Owen Underhill has joined them in Strawford Park, is watching them, but that's all right; no one sees this visitor from the far side of the dreamcatcher except for Henry himself.

  Duddits is smiling, but he looks puzzled at the tears on two of his friends' cheeks. "Eye-ooo ine?" he asks Jonesy--why you cryin?

  "It doesn't matter," Jonesy says. When he slips his hand out of Duddits's, the last of the connection breaks. Jonesy wipes at his face and so does Pete. Beav utters a sobbing little laugh.

  "I think I swallowed my toothpick," he says.

  "Nah, there it is, ya fag," Henry says, and points to the grass, where the chewed-up pick is lying.

  "Fine Osie?" Duddits asks.

  "Can you, Duds?" Henry asks.

  Duddits walks toward the softball field, and they follow him in a respectful little cluster. Duds walks right past Owen but of course doesn't see him; to Duds, Owen Underhill doesn't exist, at least not yet. He walks past the bleachers, past third base, past the little snackbar. Then he stops.

  Beside him, Pete gasps.

  Duddits turns and looks at him, bright-eyed and interested, almost laughing. Pete is holding out one finger, ticking it back and forth, looking past the moving finger at the ground. Henry follows his gaze and for a moment thinks he sees something--a bright flash of yellow on the grass, like paint--and then it's gone. There's only Pete, doing what he does when he's using his special remembering gift.

  "Ooo you eee-a yine, Eete?" Duddits inquires in a fatherly way that almost makes Henry laugh--Do you see the line, Pete?

  "Yeah," Pete says, bug-eyed. "Fuck, yeah." He looks up at the others. "She was here, you guys! She was right here!"

  They walk across Strawford Park, following a line only Duddits and Pete can see while a man only Henry can see follows along behind them. At the north end of the park is a rickety board fence with a sign on it: D.B.&A. R.R. PROPERTY KEEP OUT! Kids have been ignoring this sign for years, and it's been years since the Derry, Bangor, and Aroostook actually ran freights along the spur through The Barrens, anyway. But they see the train-tracks when they push through a break in the fence; they are down at the bottom of the slope, gleaming rustily in the sun.

  The slope is steep, a-riot with poison sumac and poison ivy, and halfway down they find Josie Rinkenhauer's big plastic purse. It is old now and sadly battered--mended in several places with friction tape--but Henry would know that purse anywhere.

  Duddits pounces on it happily, yanks it open, peers inside. "ArbyEN!" he announces, and pulls them out. Pete, meanwhile, has foraged on, bent over at the waist, grim as Sherlock Holmes on the trail of Professor Moriarty. And it is Pete Moore who actually finds her, looking wildly around at the others from a filthy concrete drainpipe that pokes out of the slope and tangled foliage: "She's in here!" Pete screams deliriously. Except for two flaring patches of color on his cheeks, his face is as pale as paper. "Guys, I think she's in here!"

  There is an ancient and incredibly complex system of drains and sewers beneath Derry, a town which exists in what was once swampland shunned even by the Micmac Indians who lived all around it. Most of the sewer-system was built in the thirties, with New Deal money, and most of it will collapse in 1985, during the big storm that will flood the town and destroy the Derry Standpipe. Now the pipes still exist. This one slopes downward as it bores into the hill. Josie Rinkenhauer ventured in, fell, then slid on fifty years' worth of dead leaves. She went down like a kid on a slide and lies at the bottom. She has exhausted herself in her efforts to climb back up the greasy, crumbling incline; she has eaten the two or three cookies she had in the pocket of her pants and for the last series of endless hours--twelve, perhaps fourteen--has only lain in the reeking darkness, listening to the faint hum of the outside world she cannot reach and waiting to die.

  Now at the sound of Pete's voice, she raises her head and calls with all of her remaining strength: "Help mee! I can't get out! Pleeease, help meee!"

  It never occurs to them that they should go for an adult--perhaps for Officer Nell, who patrols this neighborhood. They are crazy to get her out; she has become their responsibility. They won't let Duddits in, they maintain at least that much sanity, but the rest of them create a chain into the dark without so much as thirty seconds' discussion: Pete first, then the Beav, then Henry, then Jonesy, the heaviest, as their anchor.

  In this fashion they crawl into the sewage-smelling dark (there's the stench of something else, too, something old and nasty beyond belief), and before he's gotten ten feet Henry finds one of Josie's sneakers in the muck. He puts it in a back pocket of his jeans without even thinking about it.

  A few seconds later, Pete calls back over his shoulder: "Whoa, stop."

  The girl's weeping and pleas for help are very loud now, and Pete can actually see her sitting at the bottom of the leaf-lined slope. She's peering up at them, her face a smudged white circle in the gloom.

  They stretch their chain farther, being as careful as they can despite their excitement. Jonesy has got his feet braced against a huge chunk of fallen concrete. Josie reaches up . . . gropes . . . cannot quite touch Pete's outstretched hand. At last, when it seems they must admit defeat, she scrambles a little way up. Pete grabs her scratched and filthy wrist.

  "Yeah!" he screams triumphantly. "Gotcha!"

  They pull her carefully back up the pipe toward where Duddits is waiting, holding up her purse in one hand and the two dolls in the other, shouting in to Josie not to worry, not to worry because he's got BarbieKen. There's sunlight, fresh air, and as they help
her out of the pipe--

  15

  There was no telephone in the Humvee--two different radios but no telephone. Nevertheless, a phone rang loudly, shattering the vivid memory Henry had spun between them and scaring the hell out of both of them.

  Owen jerked like a man coming out of a deep sleep and the Humvee lost its tenuous hold on the road, first skidding and then going into a slow and ponderous spin, like a dinosaur dancing.

  "Holy fuck--"

  He tried to turn into the skid. The wheel only spun, turning with sick ease, like the wheel of a sloop that has lost its rudder. The Humvee went backward down the single treacherous lane that was left on the southbound side of I-95, and at last fetched up askew in the snowbank on the median side, headlights opening a cone of snowy light back in the direction they had come.

  Brring! Brring! Brring! Out of thin air.

  It's in my head, Owen thought. I'm projecting it, but I think it's actually in my head, more goddam telep--

  There was a pistol on the seat between them, a Glock. Henry picked it up, and when he did, the ringing stopped. He put the muzzle against his ear with his entire fist wrapped around the gunbutt.

  Of course, Owen thought. Makes perfect sense. He got a call on the Glock, that's all. Happens all the time.

  "Hello," Henry said. Owen couldn't hear the reply, but his companion's tired face lit in a grin. "Jonesy! I knew it was you!"

  Who else would it be? Owen wondered. Oprah Winfrey?

  "Where--"

  Listening.

  "Did he want Duddits, Jonesy? Is that why . . ." Listening again. Then: "The Standpipe? Why . . . Jonesy? Jonesy?"

  Henry held the pistol against the side of his head a moment longer, then looked at it without seeming to realize what it was. He laid it on the seat again. The smile had gone.

  "He hung up. I think the other one was coming back. Mr. Gray, he calls him."

  "He's alive, your buddy, but you don't look happy about it." It was Henry's thoughts that weren't happy about it, but there was no longer any need to say this. Happy at first, the way you were always happy when someone you liked gave you a little ringy-dingy on the old Glock, but not happy now. Why?