Stephen King: Dreamcatcher

“Hello, it’s Jones,” he says.

“Hey, Jonesy, how’s life treating you?”

He’d know that voice anywhere. “Henry! Hey! Good, life’s good!”

Life does not, in fact, seem all that great, not with Defuniak due in a quarter of an hour, but it’s all relative, isn’t it? Compared to where he’s going to be twelve hours from now, hooked up to all those beeping machines, one operation behind him and three more ahead of him, Jonesy is, as they say, farting through silk.

“Glad to hear it.”

Jonesy might have heard the heaviness in Henry’s voice, but more likely it’s a thing he senses.

“Henry? What’s wrong?”

Silence. Jonesy is about to ask again when Henry answers.

“A patient of mine died yesterday. I happened to see the obit in the paper. Barry Newman, his name was.” Henry pauses. “He was a couch man.”

Jonesy doesn’t know what that means, but his old friend is hurting. He knows that.

“Suicide?”

“Heart attack. At the age of twenty-nine. Dug his grave with his own fork and spoon.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He hasn’t been my patient for almost three years. I scared him away. I had one of those things. Do you know what I’m talking about?” Jonesy thinks he does. “Was it the line?'Henry sighs. It doesn’t sound like regret to Jonesy. It sounds like relief “Yeah. I kind of socked it to him. He took off like his ass was on fire.”

“That doesn’t make you responsible for his coronary.”

“Maybe you’re right. But that’s not the way it feels.” A pause. And then, with a shade of amusement: “Isn’t that a line from a Jim Croce song? Are you all right, Jonesy?” “Me? Yeah. Why do you ask?” “I don’t know,” Henry says. “Only… I’ve been thinking about you ever since I opened the paper and saw Barry’s picture on the obituary page. I want you to be careful.” Around his bones (many of which will soon be broken), Jonesy feels a slight coldness. “What exactly are you talking about?” “I don’t know,” Henry says. “Maybe nothing. But…”

“Is it the line now? ” Jonesy is alarmed. He swings around in his chair and looks out the window at the chancy spring sunlight. It crosses his mind that maybe the Defuniak kid is disturbed, maybe he’s carrying a gun ( packing heat , as they say in the mystery and suspense novels Jonesy likes to read in his spare time) and Henry has somehow picked this up.

“I don’t know. The most likely thing is that I’m just having a displaced reaction from seeing Barry’s picture on the all-done page. But watch yourself the next little while, would you?”

“Well… yeah. I can do that.”

“Good.”

“And you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

But Jonesy doesn’t think Henry is fine at all. He’s about to say something else when someone clears his throat behind him and he realizes that Defuniak has probably arrived.

“Well, that’s good,” he says, and swivels around in his chair. Yep, there’s his eleven-o'clock in the doorway, not looking dangerous at all: just a kid bundled into a big old duffel coat that’s too heavy for the day, looking thin and underfed, wearing one earring and a punky haircut that spikes over his worried eyes. “Henry, I’ve got an appointment. I’ll call you back-”

“No, that’s not necessary. Really.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am. But there’s one other thing. Got thirty more seconds?”

“Sure, you bet.” He holds up a finger to Defuniak and Defuniak nods. But he just goes on standing there until Jonesy points to the one chair in the little office besides his own that isn’t stacked with books. Defuniak goes to it reluctantly. Into the phone, Jonesy says, “Shoot.”

“I think we ought to go back to Derry. Just a quick trip, just you and me. See our old friend.”

“You mean-?” But he doesn’t want to say that name, that baby-sounding name, with a stranger in the room.

He doesn’t have to; Henry says it for him. Once they were a quartet, then for a little while they were five, and then they were four again. But the fifth one has never exactly left them. Henry says that name, the name of a boy who is magically still a boy. About him, Henry’s worries are more clear, more easily expressed. It isn’t anything he knows, he tells Jonesy, just a feeling that their old pal might need a visit.

“Have you talked to his mother?” Jonesy asked. “I think,” Henry says, “it might be better if we just… you know, orbited on in there. How’s your calendar look for this weekend? Or the one after?” Jonesy doesn’t need to check. The weekend starts day after tomorrow. There’s a faculty thing

Saturday afternoon, but he can easily get clear of that.

“I’m fine both days this weekend,” he says. “If I was to come by Saturday? At ten?”

“That’d be fine.” Henry sounds relieved, more like himself. Jonesy relaxes a little. “You’re sure?”

“If you think we ought to go see…” Jonesy hesitates. “… see Douglas, then probably we should. It’s been too long.”

“Your appointment’s there, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay. I’ll look for you at ten on Saturday. Hey, maybe we’ll take the Scout. Give it a run. How would that be?”

“That would be terrific.”

Henry laughs. “Carla still makin your lunch, Jonesy?”

“She is. “Jonesy looks toward his briefcase.

“What you got today? Tuna fish?”

“Egg salad.”

“Mmm-mmm. Okay, I’m out of here. SSDD, right?”

“SSDD,” Jonesy agrees. He can’t call their old friend by his right name in front of a student, but SSDD is all right. “Talk to you I-”

“Arid take care of yourself I mean it .” The emphasis in Henry’s voice is unmistakable, and a little scary. But before Jonesy can respond (and what he would say with Defuniak sitting in the corner, watching and listening, he doesn’t know), Henry is gone.

Jonesy looks at the phone thoughtfully for a moment, then hangs up. He flips a page on his desk calendar, and on Saturday he crosses out Drinks at Dean Jacobson’s house and writes Beg off-going to Derry with Henry to see D . But this is an appointment he will not keep. By Saturday, Derry and his old friends will be the furthest things from his mind.

Jonesy pulls in a deep breath, lets it out, and transfers his attention to his troublesome eleven-o'clock. The kid shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He has a pretty good idea why he’s been summoned here, Jonesy guesses.

“So, Mr Defuniak,” he says. “You’re from Maine, according to your records.”

“Uh, yeah. Pittsfield. I-”

“Your records also say that you’re here on scholarship, and that you’ve done well.”

The kid, he sees, is actually a lot more than worried. The kid is on the verge of tears. Christ, but this is hard. Jonesy has never had to accuse a student of cheating before, but he supposes this won’t be the last time. He only hopes it doesn’t happen too often. Because this is hard, what Beaver would call a fuckarow.

“Mr Defuniak-David-do you know what happens to scholarships if the students holding them are caught cheating? On a mid-term exam, let us say?”

The kid jerks as if a hidden prankster under his chair has just triggered a low-voltage electrical charge into one of his skinny buttocks. Now his lips are trembling and the first tear, oh God, there it goes down his unshaven boy’s cheek.

“I can tell you, “Jonesy says. “Such scholarships evaporate. That’s what happens to them. Poof, and gone into thin air.”

There is a folder on Jonesy’s desk. He opens it and takes out a European History mid-term, one of those multiple-choice monstrosities upon which the Department, in its great unwisdom, insists. Written on top of this one, in the black strokes of an IBM pencil (“Make sure your marks are heavy and unbroken, and if you need to erase, erase completely”), is the name DAVID DEFUNIAK.