Dreamcatcher

“You are telling me,” Jonesy said, looking at Henry over the top of his sleeping son’s head, “that I almost destroyed the human race because I had a hysterical pregnancy?”

“Oh, no,” Henry said. “If that had been all, it would have passed off. Would have amounted to no more than a… a fugue. But in you, the idea of Mr Gray stuck like a fly in a spiderweb.”

“It stuck in the dreamcatcher.”

“Yes.”

They fell quiet. Soon Carla would call them and they would eat hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad and watermelon, beneath the blue shield of the infinitely permeable sky.

“And will you say it was all coincidence?” Jonesy asked. “That they just happened to come down in the Jefferson Tract and I just happened to be there? And not just me, either. You and Peter and Beav. Plus Duddits, Just a couple of hundred miles to the south, don’t forget that. Because it was Duddits who held us together.”

“Duddits was always a sword with two edges,” Henry said, “Josie Rinkenhauer on one-Duddits the finder, Duddits the savior. Richie Grenadeau on the other-Duddits the killer. Only Duddits needed us to help him kin. I’m sure of that. We were the ones with the deeper subconscious layer. We supplied the hate and the fear-the fear that Richie really would get us, the way he promised he would. We always had more of the dark stuff than Duds. His idea of being mean was counting your crib backward, and that was more in the spirit of fun than anything else. Still… do you remember the time Pete pulled Duddits’s hat over his eyes and Duds walked into the wall?”

Jonesy did, vaguely. Out at the mall, that had been. When they had been young and the mall had been the place to go. Same shit, different day.

“For quite awhile after that, Pete lost whenever we played the Duddits game. Duddits always counted him backward, and none of us tipped to it. We probably thought it was just coincidence, but in light of everything I know now, I tend to doubt that.”

“You think even Duddits knew payback’s a bitch?”

“He learned it from us, Jonesy.”

“Duddits gave Mr Gray his foothold. His mindhold.”

“Yeah, but he also gave you a stronghold-a place where you could hide from Mr Gray. Don’t forget that.”

No, Jonesy thought, he would never forget that.

“All of it on our end started with Duddits,” Henry said. “We’ve been odd, Jonesy, ever since we knew him. You know it’s true. The things with Richie Grenadeau were only the big things, the ones that stood out. If you look back over your life, you’ll see other things. I’m sure of it.”

“Defuniak,” Jonesy murmured. “Who’s that?''The kid I caught cheating just before my accident. I caught him even though I wasn’t there on the day the test was given.”

“You see? But in the end, it was Duddits who broke the little gray son of a bitch. I’ll tell you something else: I think Duddits saved my life at the end of East Street. I think it’s entirely possible that when Kurtz’s sidekick looked into the back of the Humvee at us-the first time, I’m talking about-he had a little Duddits in his head saying “Don’t worry, old hoss, go on about your business, they dead."”

But Jonesy had not left his earlier thought. “And are we supposed to believe that the byrum co

“Why not? There are scientists, brilliant men like Stephen Jay Gould, who believe that our own species exists thanks to an even longer and more improbable chain of coincidences. “'Is that what you believe?”

Henry lifted his hands. He hardly knew how to reply without invoking God, who had crept back into his life over these last few months. By the back door, as it were, and in the dead of many sleepless nights. But did one have to invoke that old deus ex machina to make sense of this?

“What I believe is that Duddits is us, Jonesy. L'enfant c'est moi… toi…tout le monde. Race, species, genus; game, set, and match. We are, in our sum, Duddits, and all our noblest aspirations come down to no more than keeping track of the yellow lunchbox and learning to put our shoes on the right way-fit wha, fit neek. Our wickedest motions, in a cosmic sense, come down to no more than counting someone’s crib, pegging it backward, then playing dumb about it.”

Jonesy was regarding him with fascination. “That’s either inspiring or horrible. I can’t tell which.”

“And it doesn’t matter.”

Jonesy thought about this, then asked: “If we’re Duddits, who sings to us? Who sings the lullaby, helps us go to sleep when we’re sad and scared?”

“Oh, God still does that,” Henry said, and could have kicked himself. There it was, out in spite of all his intentions.

“And did God keep that last weasel out of Shaft 12? Because if that thing had gotten in the water, Henry-”

Technically, the weasel that had incubated inside of Perlmutter had actually been the last, but it was a fine point, a hair that needed no splitting.

“It would have caused trouble, I don’t dispute that; for a couple of years, whether or not to tear down Fenway Park would have been the least of Boston’s concerns. But destroy us? I don’t think so. We were a new thing to them. Mr Gray knew it; those tapes of you under hypnosis”

“Don’t talk about those.” Jonesy had listened to two of them, and believed doing so had been the biggest mistake he’d made during his time in Wyoming. Listening to himself speak as Mr Gray-under deep hypnosis to become Mr Gray-had been like listening to a malevolent ghost. There were times when he thought he might be the only man on earth who truly understood what it was to be raped. Some things were better forgotten.

“Sorry.”

Jonesy waved his hand to show it was okay-not a problem but he had paled considerably.

“All I’m saying is that, to a greater or lesser degree, we are a species living in the dreamcatcher. I hate the way that sounds, phony transcendentalism, rings on the ear like pure tin, but we don’t have the right words for this part of it, either. We may have to invent some eventually, but in the meantime, dreamcatcher will have to do.”

Henry turned in his seat. Jonesy did the same, shifting Noel a little bit on his lap. A dreamcatcher hung over the door to the cabin. Henry had brought it as a house present, and Jonesy had put it up at once, like a Catholic peasant nailing a crucifix to the door of his cottage during a time of vampires.

“Maybe they were just drawn to you,” Henry said. “To us. The way flowers turn to follow the sun, or the way iron filings line up when they feel the pull of a magnet. We can’t tell for sure, because the byrum is so different from us.”

“Will they be back?” “Oh yes,” Henry said. “Them or others.” He looked up at the blue sky of this late-summer day. Somewhere in the distance, toward the Quabbin Reservoir, an eagle screamed. “I think you can take that to the bank. But not today.” “Guys!” Carla shouted. “Lunch is ready!”

Henry took Noel from Jonesy. For a moment their hands touched, their eyes touched, and their minds touched-for a moment they saw the line. Henry smiled. Jonesy smiled back. Then they walked down the steps and across the lawn side by side, Jonesy limping, Henry with the sleeping child in his arms, and for that moment the only darkness was their shadows trailing behind them on the grass.

Lovell, Maine May 29, 2000