Dreamcatcher by Stephen King Page A

the door. A moment later the door opened and Beavercame in. Snow swirled around his legs in a dancing mist.
    â€œJesus-Christ-bananas,” the Beav said. Pete had once made a list of Beav-isms, and Jesus-Christ-bananas was high on it, along with such standbys as doodlyfuck and Kiss my bender. They were exclamations both Zen and profane. “I thought I was gonna end up spendin the night out there, then I saw the light.” Beav raised his hands roofward, fingers spread. “Seen de light, Lawd, yessir, praise Je—” His glasses started to unfog then, and he saw the stranger on the couch. He lowered his hands, slowly, then smiled. That was one of the reasons Jonesy had loved him ever since grade school, although the Beav could be tiresome and wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, by any means: his first reaction to the unplanned and unexpected wasn’t a frown but a smile.
    â€œHi,” he said. “I’m Joe Clarendon. Who’re you?”
    â€œRick McCarthy,” he said, and got to his feet. The comforter tumbled off him and Jonesy saw he had a pretty good potbelly pooching out the front of his sweater. Well, he thought, nothing strange about that, at least, it’s the middle-aged man’s disease, and it’s going to kill us in our millions during the next twenty years or so.
    McCarthy stuck out his hand, started to step forward, and almost tripped over the fallen comforter. If Jonesy hadn’t reached out and grabbed his shoulder, steadying him, McCarthy probably would have fallen forward, very likely cleaning out the coffee-table on which the food was now set. Again Jonesy was struck by the man’s queer ungainliness—it made him think ofhimself a little that past spring, as he had learned to walk all over again. He got a closer look at the patch on the guy’s cheek, and sort of wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t frostbite at all. It looked like a skin-tumor of some kind, or perhaps a portwine stain with stubble growing out of it.
    â€œWho, whoa, shake it but don’t break it,” Beaver said, springing forward. He grabbed McCarthy’s hand and pumped it until Jonesy thought McCarthy would end up swan-diving into the coffee-table after all. He was glad when the Beav—all five-feet-six of him, with snow still melting into all that long black hippie hair—stepped back. The Beav was still smiling, more broadly than ever. With the shoulder-length hair and the thick glasses, he looked like either a math genius or a serial killer. In fact, he was a carpenter.
    â€œRick here’s had a time of it,” Jonesy said. “Got lost yesterday and spent last night in the woods.”
    Beaver’s smile stayed on but became concerned. Jonesy had an idea what was coming next and willed Beaver not to say it—he had gotten the impression that McCarthy was a fairly religious man who might not care much for profanity—but of course asking Beaver to clean up his mouth was like asking the wind not to blow.
    â€œBitch-in-a-buzzsaw!” he cried now. “That’s fuckin terrible! Sit down! Eat! You too, Jonesy.”
    â€œNah,” Jonesy said, “you go on and eat that. You’re the one who just came in out of the snow.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œI am. I’ll just scramble myself some eggs. Rickcan catch you up on his story.” Maybe it’ll make more sense to you than it does to me, he thought.
    â€œOkay.” Beaver took off his jacket (red) and his vest (orange, of course). He started to toss them on the woodpile, then thought better of it. “Wait, wait, got something you might want.” He stuck his hand deep into one of the pockets of his down jacket, rummaged, and came out with a paperback book, considerably bent but seemingly none the worse for wear otherwise. Little devils with pitchforks danced across the cover— Small Vices, by Robert Parker. It was the book Jonesy had been reading