Dreamcatcher

underpants. The door is open. The men look at each other, but no one speaks. They have a good idea of what they’re going to find inside: one dead Russian lady, hold the clothes.

But they don’t. The circular iron cover over the top of Shaft 12 has been moved just enough to create a crescent moon of darkness on the Reservoir side. Beyond it is the crowbar the woman used to shift the lid-it would have been leaning behind the door, where there are a few other tools. And beyond the crowbar is the Russian woman’s purse. On top of it is her billfold, open to show her identification card. On top of the billfold-the apex of the pyramid, so to speak-is her passport. Poking out of it is a slip of paper, covered with chicken-scratches that have to be Russian, or Cyrillic, or whatever they call it. The men believe it is a suicide note, but upon translation it proves to be nothing but the Russian woman’s directions. At the very bottom she has written When road ends, walk along shore. And so she did, disrobing as she went, unmindful of the branches which poked and the bushes which scratched.

The men stand around the partially covered shaft-head, scratching their heads and listening to the babble of the water as it starts on its way to the taps and faucets and fountains and back-yard hoses of Boston. The sound is hollow, somehow dank, and there’s good reason for that: Shaft 12 is a hundred and twenty-five feet deep. The men cannot understand why she chose to do it the way she did, but they can see what she did all too clearly, can see her sitting on the stone floor with her feet dangling; she looks like a nakedy version of the girl on the White Rock labels. She takes a final look over her shoulder, perhaps, to make sure her billfold and her passport are still where she put them. She wants someone to know who passed this way, and there is something hideously, unassuageably sad about that. One look back, and then she slips into the eclipse between the partially dislodged cover and the side of the shaft. Perhaps she held her nose, like a kid cannonballing into the community swimming pool. Perhaps not. Either way, she is gone in less than a second. Hello darkness my old friend.

11

Old Mr Beckwith’s final words on the subject before driving on down the road in his mail-truck had been these: Way I heard it, the folks in Boston’ll be drinking her in their morning coffee tight around Valentine’s Day. Then he’d given Jonesy a grin. I don’t drink the water myself, I stick to beer.

In Massachusetts, as in Australia, you say that beah.

12

Jonesy had paced around his office twelve or fourteen times now. He stopped for a moment behind his desk chair, absently rubbing his hip, then set off again, still counting, good old obsessive-compulsive Jonesy.

One…two…three…

The story of the Russian woman was certainly a fine one, a superior example of the Small Town Creepy Yarn (haunted houses where multiple murders had taken place and the sites of terrible roadside accidents were also good), and it certainly cast a clear light on Mr Gray’s plans for Lad, the unfortunate border collie, but what good did it do him to know where Mr Gray was going? After all…

Back to the chair again, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, and wait a minute, just wait a goddam minute. The first time he’d gone around the room, he’d done it in just thirty-four paces, hadn’t he? So how could it be fifty this time? He wasn’t shuffling, taking baby steps, anything like that, so how-

You’ve been making it bigger. Walking around it and making it bigger. Because you were restless. It’s your room, after all. I bet you could make it as big as the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom, if you wanted to…and Mr Gray couldn’t stop you.

“Is that possible?” Jonesy whispered. He stood by his desk chair, one hand on the back, like a man posing for a portrait. He didn’t need an answer to his question; eyesight was enough. The room was bigger.

Henry was coming. If he had Duddits with him, following Mr Gray would be easy enough no matter how many times Mr Gray changed vehicles, because Duddits saw the line. He had led them to Richie Grenadeau in a dream, later he had led them to Josie Rinkenhauer in reality, and he could direct Henry now as easily as a keen-nosed hound leads a hunter to the fox’s earth. The problem was the lead, the goddam lead that Mr Gray had. An hour at least. Maybe more. And once Mr Gray had chucked the dog down Shaft 12, there went your ballgame. There’d be time to shut off Boston’s water supply-theoretically-but could Henry convince anyone to take such an enormous, disruptive step? Jonesy doubted it. And what about all the people along the way who would drink the water almost immediately? Sixty-five hundred in Ware, eleven thousand in Athol, over a hundred and fifty thousand in Worcester. Those people would have weeks instead of months. Only days in some cases.

Was there any way to slow the son of a bitch down? Give Henry a chance to catch up?

Jonesy looked up at the dreamcatcher, and as he did, something in the room changed-there was a sigh, almost, the sort of sound ghosts are reputed to make at seances. But this was no ghost, and Jonesy felt his arms prickle. At the same time his eyes filled with tears. A line from Thomas Wolfe occurred to him-o lost, a stone, a leaf, a unfound door. Thomas Wolfe, whose thesis had been that you can’t go home again.

“Duddits?” he whispered. The hair on his neck had stiffened. “Duddie, is that you?”

No answer… but when he looked at the desk where the useless phone had stood, he saw that something new had been added. Not a stone or a leaf, not an unfound door, but a cribbage board and a deck of cards.

Someone wanted to play the game.

13

Hurt pretty much all the time now. Mumma know, he tell Mumma. Jesus know, he tell Jesus. He don’t tell Henry, Henry hurts too, Henry tired and make sad. Beaver and Pete are in heaven where they sitteth at the right hand of God the Father all mighty, maker of heaven and earth forever and ever, Jesus” sake, hey man. That makes him sad, they were good friends and played games but never made fun. Once they found Josie and once they saw a tall guy, he a cowboy, and once they play the game.

This a game too, only Pete used to say Duddits it doesn’t matter if you win or booze it’s how you play the game only this time it does matter, it does, Jonesy say it does, Jonesy hard of hearing but pretty soon it’ll be better, pretty soon. If only he don’t hurt. Even his Perco don’t help. His throat make sore and his body shakes and his belly make hurry kind of like when he has to go poopoo, kind of like that, but he doesn’t have to go poopoo, and when he cough sometimes make blood. He would like to sleep but there is Henry and his new friend Owen that was there the day they found Josie and they say If only we could slow him down and If only we could catch up and he has to stay awake and help them but he has to close his eyes to hear Jonesy and they think he’s asleep, Owen says Shouldn’t we wake him up, what if the son of a bitch turns off somewhere, and Henry says I tell you I know where he’s going, but we’ll wake him up at 1-90 just to be sure. For now let him sleep, my God, he looks so tired. And again, only this time thinking it: If only we could slow the son of a bitch down.

Eyes closed. Arms crossed over his aching chest. Breathing slow, Mumma say breathe slow when you cough. Jonesy’s not dead, not in heaven with Beaver and Pete, but Mr Gray say Jonesy locked and Jonesy believes him. Jonesy’s in the office, no phone and no facts, hard to talk to because Mr Gray is mean and Mr Gray is scared. Scared Jonesy will find out which one is really locked up.

When did they talk most?

When they played the game.

The game.

A shudder racks him. He has to make hard think and it hurts, he can feel it stealing away his strength, the last little bits of his strength, but this time it’s more than just a game, this time it matters who wins and who boozes, so he gives his strength, he makes the board and he makes the cards, Jonesy is crying, Jonesy thinks o lost, but Duddits Cavell isn’t lost, Duddits sees the line, the line goes to the office, and this time he will do more than peg the pegs.

Don’t cry Jonesy, he says, and the words are clear, in his mind they always are, it is only his stupid mouth that mushes them up. Don’t cry, I’m not lost.

Eyes closed. Arms crossed.

In Jonesy’s office, beneath the dreamcatcher, Duddits plays the game.

14

“I’ve got the dog,” Henry said. He sounded exhausted. “The one Perlmutter’s homed in on. I’ve got it. We’re a little bit closer. Christ, if there was just a way to slow them down!”

It was raining now, and Owen could only hope they’d be south of the freeze-line if it went over to sleet. The wind was gusting hard enough to sway the Hummer on the road. It was noon, and they were between Saco and Biddeford. Owen glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Duddits in the back seat, eyes closed, head back, skinny arms crossed on his chest. His complexion was an alarming yellow, but a thin line of bright blood trickled from the comer of his mouth.

“Is there any way your friend can help?” Owen asked.

“I think he’s trying.”

“I thought you said he was asleep.”

Henry turned, looked at Duddits, then looked at Owen. “I was wrong,” he said.

15

Jonesy dealt the cards, threw two into the crib from his hand, then picked up the other hand and added two more.

“Don’t cry, Jonesy. Don’t cry, I’m not lost.”

Jonesy glanced up at the dreamcatcher, quite sure the words had come from there. “I’m not crying, Duds. Fuckin allergies, that’s all. Now I think you want to play-”

“Two,” said the voice from the dreamcatcher.

Jonesy played the deuce from Duddits’s hand-not a bad lead, actually-then played a seven from his own. That made nine. Duddits had a six in his hand; the question was whether or not-

“Six for fifteen,” said the voice from the dreamcatcher. “Fifteen for two. Kiss my bender!”

Jonesy laughed in spite of himself It was Duddits, all right, but for a moment he had sounded just like the Beav. “Go on and peg it, then.” And watched, fascinated, as one of the pegs on the board rose, floated, and settled back down in the second hole on First Street.