Dreamcatcher by Stephen King Page B

in the stand.
    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.”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œWell, 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 couldanswer the wind gasped around the cabin again, making the walls creak and rising to a grim whistle in the eaves.
    â€œAw, 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 moretalking than eating, it seemed. He’d barely touched his soup, and had eaten only half of his grilled cheese.
    â€œHow 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.
    â€œWe’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.
    â€œNot 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