The Beav held it out to him, smiling. "I left your sleeping-bag, but I figured you wouldn't be able to sleep tonight unless you knew who the fuck done it."
"You shouldn't have gone up there," Jonesy said, but he was touched in a way only Beaver could touch him. The Beav had come back through the blowing snow and hadn't been able to make out if Jonesy was up in the tree-stand or not, not for sure. He could have called, but for the Beav, calling wasn't enough, only seeing was believing.
"Not a problem," Beaver said, and sat down next to McCarthy, who was looking at him as a person might look at a new and rather exotic kind of small animal.
"Well, thanks," Jonesy said. "You get around that sandwich. I'm going to do eggs." He started away, then stopped. "What about Pete and Henry? You think they'll make it back okay?"
The Beav opened his mouth, but before he could answer the wind gasped around the cabin again, making the walls creak and rising to a grim whistle in the eaves.
"Aw, this is just a cap of snow," Beaver said when the gust died away. "They'll make it back. Getting out again if there comes a real norther, that might be a different story." He began to gobble the grilled cheese sandwich. Jonesy went over to the kitchen to scramble some eggs and heat up another can of soup. He felt better about McCarthy now that Beaver was here. The truth was he always felt better when the Beav was around. Crazy but true.
4
By the time he got the eggs scrambled and the soup hot, McCarthy was chatting away to Beaver as if the two of them had been friends for the last ten years. If McCarthy was offended by the Beav's litany of mostly comic profanity, that was outweighed by Beav's considerable charm. "There's no explaining it," Henry had once told Jonesy. "He's a tribble, that's all--you can't help liking him. It's why his bed is never empty--it sure isn't his looks women respond to."
Jonesy brought his eggs and soup into the living area, working not to limp--it was amazing how much more his hip hurt in bad weather; he had always thought that was an old wives' tale but apparently it was not--and sat in one of the chairs at the end of the couch. McCarthy had been doing more talking than eating, it seemed. He'd barely touched his soup, and had eaten only half of his grilled cheese.
"How you boys doin?" Jonesy asked. He shook pepper onto his eggs and fell to with a will--his appetite had made a complete comeback, it seemed.
"We're two happy whoremasters," Beaver said, but although he sounded as chipper as ever, Jonesy thought he looked worried, perhaps even alarmed. "Rick's been telling me about his adventures. It's as good as a story in one of those men's magazines they had in the barber shop when I was a kid." He turned back to McCarthy, still smiling--that was the Beav, always smiling--and flicked a hand through the heavy fall of his black hair. "Old Man Castonguay was the barber on our side of Derry when I was a kid, and he scared me so fuckin bad with those clippers of his that I been stayin away from em ever since."
McCarthy gave a weak little smile but made no reply. He picked up the other half of his cheese sandwich, looked at it, then put it back down again. The red mark on his cheek glowed like a brand. Beaver, meanwhile, rushed on, as if he was afraid of what McCarthy might say if given half a chance. Outside it was snowing harder than ever, blowing, too, and Jonesy thought of Henry and Pete out there, probably on the Deep Cut Road by now, in Henry's old Scout.
"Not only did Rick here just about get eaten up by something in the middle of the night--a bear, he thinks it was--he lost his rifle, too. A brand-new Remington .30-.30, fuckin A, you won't never see that again, not a chance in a hundred thousand."
"I know," McCarthy said. The color was fading out of his cheeks again, that leaden look coming back in. "I don't even remember when I put it down, or--"
There was a sudden low rasping noise, like a locust. Jonesy felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen, thinking it was something caught in the fireplace chimney. Then he realized it was McCarthy. Jonesy had heard some loud farts in his time, some long ones, too, but nothing like this. It seemed to go on forever, although it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. Then the smell hit.
McCarthy had picked up his spoon; now he dropped it back into his barely touched soup and raised his right hand to his blemished cheek in an almost girlish gesture of embarrassment. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry," he said.
"Not a bit, more room out than there is in," Beaver said, but that was just instinct running his mouth, instinct and the habits of a lifetime--Jonesy could see he was as shocked by that smell as Jonesy was himself. It wasn't the sulfurous rotten-egg odor that made you laugh and roll your eyes and wave your hand in front of your face, yelling Ah, Jesus, who cut the cheese? Nor one of those methane swamp-gas farts, either. It was the smell Jonesy had detected on McCarthy's breath, only stronger--a mixture of ether and overripe bananas, like the starter fluid you shot into your carburetor on a subzero morning.
"Oh dear, that's awful," McCarthy said. "I am so darned sorry."
"It's all right, really," Jonesy said, but his stomach had curled up into a ball, like something protecting itself from assault. He wouldn't be finishing his own early lunch; no way in hell could he finish it. He wasn't prissy about farts as a rule, but this one really reeked.
The Beav got up from the couch and opened a window, letting in a swirl of snow and a draft of blessedly fresh air. "Don't you worry about it, partner . . . but that is pretty ripe. What the hell you been eatin? Woodchuck turds?"
"Bushes and moss and other stuff, I don't know just what," McCarthy said. "I was just so hungry, you know, I had to eat something, but I don't know much about that sort of thing, never read any of those books by Euell Gibbons . . . and of course it was dark." He said this last almost as if struck by an inspiration, and Jonesy looked up at Beaver, catching his eye to see if the Beav knew what Jonesy did--McCarthy was lying. McCarthy didn't know what he'd eaten in the woods, or if he had eaten anything at all. He just wanted to explain that ghastly unexpected frog's croak. And the stench which had followed it.
The wind gusted again, a big, gaspy whoop that sent a fresh skein of snow in through the open window, but at least it was turning the air over, and thank God for that.
McCarthy leaned forward so suddenly he might have been propelled by a spring, and when he hung his head forward between his knees, Jonesy had a good idea of what was coming next; so long Navajo rug, it's been good to know ya. The Beav clearly thought the same; he pulled back his legs, which had been splayed out before him, to keep them from being splattered.
But instead of vomit, what came out of McCarthy was a long, low buzz--the sound of a factory machine which has been put under severe strain. McCarthy's eyes bulged from his face like glass marbles, and his cheeks were so taut that little crescents of shadow appeared under the corners of his eyes. It went on and on, a rumbling, rasping noise, and when it finally ceased, the genny out back seemed far too loud.
"I've heard some mighty belches, but that's the all-time blue-ribbon winner," Beav said. He spoke with quiet and sincere respect.
McCarthy leaned back against the couch, eyes closing, mouth downturned in what Jonesy took for embarrassment, pain, or both. And once again he could smell that aroma of bananas and ether, a fermenting active smell, like something which has just started to go over.
"Oh God, I am so sorry," McCarthy said without opening his eyes. "I've been doing that all day, ever since light. And my stomach hurts again."
Jonesy and the Beav shared a silent, concerned look.
"You know what I think?" Beaver asked. "I think you need to lie down and take you a little sleep. You were probably awake all night, listening to that pesky bear and God knows what else. You're tired out and stressed out and fuck-a-duck knows what else out. You just need some shuteye, a few hours and you'll be right as the goddam rain."
McCarthy looked at Beaver with such wretched gratitude that Jonesy felt a little ashamed to be seeing it. Although McCarthy's complexion was still leaden, he had begun to break a sweat--great big beads that formed on his brow and
temples, and then ran down his cheeks like clear oil. This in spite of the cold air now circulating in the room.
"You know," he said, "I bet you're right. I'm tired, that's all it is. My stomach hurts, but that part's just stress. And I was eating all sorts of things, bushes and just . . . gosh, oh dear, I don't know . . . all sorts of things." He scratched his cheek. "Is this darn thing on my face bad? Is it bleeding?"
"No," Jonesy said. "Just red."
"It's a reaction," McCarthy said dolefully. "I get the same thing from peanuts. I'll lie down. That's the ticket, all right."
He got to his feet, then tottered. Beaver and Jonesy both reached for him, but McCarthy steadied on his feet before either of them could take hold. Jonesy could have sworn that what he had taken for a middle-aged potbelly was almost gone. Was it possible? Could the man have passed that much gas? He didn't know. All he knew for sure was that it had been a mighty fart and an even mightier belch, the sort of thing you could yarn on for twenty years or more, starting off We used to go up to Beaver Clarendon's camp the first week of hunting season every year, and one November--it was '01, the year of the big fall storm--this fella wandered into camp . . . Yes, it would make a good story, people would laugh about the big fart and the big burp, people always laughed at stories about farts and burps. He wouldn't tell the part about how he had come within eight ounces of press on a Garand's trigger of taking McCarthy's life, though. No, he wouldn't want to tell that part. Would he.
Pete and Henry were doubling, and so Beaver led McCarthy to the other downstairs bedroom, the one Jonesy had been using. The Beav shot him a little apologetic look, and Jonesy shrugged. It was the logical place, after all. Jonesy could double in with Beav tonight--Christ knew they'd done it enough as kids--and in truth, he wasn't sure McCarthy could have managed the stairs, anyway. He liked the man's sweaty, leaden look less and less.
Jonesy was the sort of man who made his bed and then buried it--books, papers, clothes, bags, assorted toiletries. He swept all this off as quick as he could, then turned back the coverlet.
"You need to take a squirt, partner?" the Beav asked.
McCarthy shook his head. He seemed almost hypnotized by the clean blue sheet Jonesy had uncovered. Jonesy was once again struck by how glassy the man's eyes were. Like the eyes of a stuffed trophy head. Suddenly and unbidden, he saw his living room back in Brookline, that upscale municipality next door to Boston. Braided rugs, early American furniture . . . and McCarthy's head mounted over the fireplace. Bagged that one up in Maine, he would tell his guests at cocktail parties. Big bastard, dressed out at one-seventy.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the Beav was looking at him with something like alarm.
"Twinge in the hip," he said. "Sorry. Mr. McCarthy--Rick--you'll want to take off your sweater and pants. Boots too, of course."
McCarthy looked around at him like a man roused from a dream. "Sure," he said. "You bet."
"Need help?" Beaver asked.
"No, gosh no." McCarthy looked alarmed or amused or both. "I'm not that far gone."
"Then I'll leave Jonesy to supervise."
Beaver slipped out and McCarthy began to undress, starting by pulling his sweater off over his head. Beneath it he wore a red-and-black hunter's shirt, and beneath that a thermal undershirt. And yes, there was less gut poking out the front of that shirt, Jonesy was sure of it.
Well--almost sure. Only an hour ago, he reminded himself, he had been sure McCarthy's coat was the head of a deer.
McCarthy sat down in the chair beside the window to take off his shoes, and when he did there was another fart--not as long as the first one, but just as loud and hoarse. Neither of them commented on it, or the resulting smell, which was strong enough in the little room to make Jonesy's eyes feel like watering.
McCarthy kicked his boots off--they made clunking sounds on the wooden floor--then stood up and unbuckled his belt. As he pushed his blue jeans down, revealing the lower half of his thermal underwear, the Beav came back in with a ceramic pot from upstairs. He put it down by the head of the bed. "Just in case you have to, you know, urk. Or if you get one of those collect calls you just have to take right away."
McCarthy looked at him with a dullness Jonesy found alarming--a stranger in what had been his bedroom, somehow ghostly in his baggy long underwear. An ill stranger. The question was just how ill.
"In case you can't make the bathroom," the Beav explained. "Which, by the way, is close by. Just bang a left outside the bedroom door, but remember it's the second door as you go along the wall, okay? If you forget and go in the first one, you'll be taking a shit in the linen closet."
Jonesy was surprised into a laugh and didn't care for the sound of it in the slightest--high and slightly hysterical.
"I feel better now," McCarthy said, but Jonesy detected absolutely zero sincerity in the man's voice. And the guy just stood there in his underwear, like an android whose memory circuits have been about three-quarters erased. Before, he had shown some life, if not exactly vivacity; now that was gone, like the color in his cheeks.
"Go on, Rick," Beaver said quietly. "Lie down and catch some winks. Work on getting your strength back."
"Yes, okay." He sat down on the freshly opened bed and looked out the window. His eyes were wide and blank. Jonesy thought the smell in the room was dissipating, but perhaps he was just getting used to it, the way you got used to the smell of the monkey-house at the zoo if you stayed in there long enough. "Gosh, look at it snow."
"Yeah," Jonesy said. "How's your stomach now?"
"Better." McCarthy's eyes moved to Jonesy's face. They were the solemn eyes of a frightened child. "I'm sorry about passing gas that way--I never did anything like that before, not even in the Army when it seemed like we ate beans every day--but I feel better."
"Sure you don't need to take a leak before you turn in?" Jonesy had four children, and this question came almost automatically.
"No. I went in the woods just before you found me. Thank you for taking me in. Thank you both."
"Ah, hell," Beaver said, and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "Anybody woulda."
"Maybe," McCarthy said. "And maybe not. In the Bible it says, 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock.' " Outside, the wind gusted more fiercely yet, making Hole in the Wall shake. Jonesy waited for McCarthy to finish--it sounded as if he had more to say--but the man just swung his feet into bed and pulled the covers up.
From somewhere deep in Jonesy's bed there came another of those long, rasping farts, and Jonesy decided that was enough for him. It was one thing to let in a wayfaring stranger when he came to your door just ahead of a storm; it was another to stand around while he laid a series of gas-bombs.
The Beaver followed him out and closed the door gently behind him.
5
When Jonesy started to talk, the Beav shook his head, raised his finger to his lips, and led Jonesy across the big room to the kitchen, which was as far as they could get from McCarthy without going into the shed out back.
"Man, that guy's in a world of hurt," Beaver said, and in the harsh glow of the kitchen's fluorescent strips, Jonesy could see just how worried his old friend was. The Beav rummaged into the wide front pocket of his overalls, found a toothpick, and began to nibble on it. In three minutes--the length of time it took a dedicated smoker to finish a cigarette--he would reduce it to a palmful of flax-fine splinters. Jonesy didn't know how the Beav's teeth stood up to it (or his stomach), but he had been doing it his whole life.
"I hope you're wrong, but . . ." Jonesy shook his head. "Did you ever smell anything like those farts?"
"Nope," Beaver said. "But there's a lot more going on with that guy than just a bad stomach."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, he thinks it's November eleventh, for one thing."
Jonesy had no idea what the Beav was talking about. November eleventh was the day their own hunting party had arrived, bundled into Henry's Scout, as always.
"Beav
, it's Wednesday. It's the fourteenth."
Beaver nodded, smiling a little in spite of himself. The toothpick, which had already picked up an appreciable warp, rolled from one side of his mouth to the other. "I know that. You know that. Rick, he don't know that. Rick thinks it's the Lord's Day."
"Beav, what exactly did he say to you?" Whatever it was, it couldn't have been much--it just didn't take that long to scramble a couple of eggs and heat a can of soup. That started a train of thought, and as Beaver talked, Jonesy ran water to do up the few dishes. He didn't mind camping out, but he was damned if he was going to live in squalor, as so many men seemed willing to do when they left their homes and went into the woods.
"What he said was they came up on Saturday so they could hunt a little, then spend Sunday working on the roof, which had a couple of leaks in it. He goes, 'At least I didn't have to break the commandment about working on the Sabbath. When you're lost in the woods, the only thing you have to work on is not going crazy.' "
"Huh," Jonesy said.
"I guess I couldn't swear in a court of law that he thinks this is the eleventh, but it's either that or go back a week further, to the fourth, because he sure does think it's Sunday. And I just can't believe he's been out there ten days."
Jonesy couldn't, either. But three? Yes. That he could believe. "It would explain something he told me," Jonesy said. "He--"
The floor creaked and they both jumped a little, looking toward the closed bedroom door on the other side of the big room, but there was nothing to see. And the floors and walls were always creaking out here, even when the wind wasn't blowing up high. They looked at each other, a little shamefaced.
"Yeah, I'm jumpy," Beaver said, perhaps reading Jonesy's face, perhaps picking the thought out of Jonesy's mind. "Man, you have to admit it's a little creepy, him turning up right out of the woods like that."
"Yeah, it is."
"That fart sounded like he had something crammed up his butt that was dying of smoke inhalation."
The Beav looked a little surprised at that, as he always did when he said something funny. They began laughing simultaneously, holding onto each other and doing it through open mouths, expelling the sounds as a series of harsh sighs, trying to keep it down, not wanting the poor guy to hear them if he was still awake, hear and know they were laughing at him. Jonesy had a particularly hard time keeping it quiet because the release was so necessary--it had a hysterical severity to it and he doubled over, gasping and snorting, water running out of his eyes.