“Duddits, Duddie, honey, what is it?”

And he screamed it out as he lay against her breast, making her forget all about what might or might not be happening up in the Jefferson Tract, freezing her scalp to her skull and making her skin crawl and horripilate. “Eeyer-eh! Eeeyer-eh! Oh Amma, Eeeyer-eh!” There was no need to ask him to say it again or to say it more clearly; she had been listening to him her whole life, and she knew well enough:

Beaver’s dead! Beaver’s dead! Oh, Mamma, Beaver’s dead!

Chapter Nine

PETE AND BECKY

Pete lay screaming in the snow-covered rut where he had landed until he could scream no more and then just lay there for awhile, trying to cope with the pain, to find some way to compromise with it. He couldn’t. This was no-compromise pain, blitzkrieg agony. He’d had no idea the world had such pain-had he known, surely he would have stayed with the woman. With Marcy, although Marcy wasn’t her name. He almost knew her name, but what did it matter? He was the one who was in trouble here, the pain coming up from his knee in baked spasms, hot and terrible.

He lay shivering in the road with the plastic bag beside him.

THANKS FOR SHOPPING AT OUR PLACE! on the side. Pete reached for it, wanting to see if there was a bottle or two in there that wasn’t broken, and when his leg shifted, a bolt of agony flew up from the knee. It made the others feel like twinges. Pete screamed again, and passed out.

He didn’t know how long he’d been out when he came to-the light suggested it hadn’t been long, but his feet were numb and his hands were going as well, in spite of the gloves.

Pete lay partially turned on his side, the beer-bag lying beside him in a puddle of freezing amber slush. The pain in his knee had receded a little-probably that was numbing up, too-and he found he could think again. That was good, because this was a fuckin pisser he’d gotten himself into here. He had to get back to the lean-to and the fire, and he had to do it on his own. If he simply lay here waiting for Henry and the snowmobile, he was apt to be a Petesicle when Henry arrived-a Petesicle with a bag of busted beer-bottles beside him, thank you for shopping at our place, you fucking alcoholic, thanks a lot. And there was the woman to think of She might die, too, and all because Pete Moore had to have his brewskis.

He looked at the bag with distaste. Couldn’t throw it into the woods; couldn’t risk waking his knee up again. So he covered it with snow, like a dog covering its own scat, and then he began to crawl.

The knee wasn’t that numb after all, it seemed. Pete crawled on his elbows and pushed with his good foot, teeth clenched, hair hanging in his eyes. No animals now; the stampede had stopped and there was only him-the gaspy sound of his breathing and the stifled moans of pain each time his knee bumped. He could feel sweat running down his arms and back, but his feet remained numb and so did his hands.

He might have given up, but halfway along the straight stretch he caught sight of the fire he and Henry had made. It had burned down considerably, but it was there. Pete began to crawl toward it, and each time he bumped his leg and the bolts of agony came, he tried to project them into the orange spark of the fire. He wanted to get there. It hurt like pluperfect hell to move, but oh how he wanted to get there. He didn’t want to die freezing to death in the snow.

“I’ll make it, Becky,” he muttered. “I’ll make it, Becky.” He spoke her name half a dozen times before he heard himself using it.

As he approached the fire he paused to glance at his watch and frowned. It said eleven-forty or thereabouts, and that was nuts-he remembered checking it before starting back to the Scout, and it had said twenty past twelve then. A slightly longer look revealed the source of the confusion. His watch was running backward, the second hand moving counterclockwise in irregular, spasmodic jerks. He looked at this without much surprise. His ability to appreciate anything so fine as mere peculiarity had passed. Even his leg was no longer his chief concern. He was very cold, and big shudders began to course his body as he elbowed his way and pushed with his rapidly tiring good leg, covering the last fifty yards to the dying fire.

The woman was no longer on the tarp. She now lay on the far side of the fire, as if she had crawled toward the remaining wood and then collapsed.

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” he panted. “Had a little trouble with my knee, but now I’m back. Goddam knee’s your fault anyway, Becky, so don’t complain, all right? Becky, is that your name?”

Maybe, but she made no response. Just lay there staring. He could still see only one of her eyes, although whether it was the same one or the other he didn’t know. Didn’t seem so creepy now, but maybe that was because he had other things to worry about. Like the fire. It was guttering, but there was a good bed of coals and he thought he was in time. Get some wood on that sweetheart, really build her up, then lie here with his gal Becky (but upwind, please God-those hangers were bad). Wait for Henry to show up. Wouldn’t be the first time Henry had pulled his nuts out of the fire.

Pete crawled toward the woman and the little stockpile of wood beyond her, and as he got close-close enough to start picking up that ethery chemical smell again-he understood why her gaze no longer bothered him. That creepy jackalope look had gone out of it. Everything had. She’d crawled halfway around the fire and died. The crusting of snow around her waist and hips had gone a dark red.

Pete stopped for a moment, up on his aching arms and peering at her, but his interest in her, dead or alive, was not much more than the passing interest he’d felt in his back-turning watch. What he wanted to do was get some wood on the fire and get warm. He would consider the problem of the woman later. Next month, maybe, when he was sitting in his own living room with a cast on his knee and a cup of hot coffee in his hand.

He finally made it to the wood. Only four pieces were left, but they were big pieces. Henry might be back before they burned down, and Henry would pick up some more before going on to get help. Good old Henry. Still wearing his dorky horn-rims, even in this age of soft contacts and laser surgery, but you could count on him.

Pete’s mind tried to return to the Scout, crawling into the Scout and smelling the cologne Henry had not, in fact, been wearing, and he wouldn’t let it. Let’s not go there, as the kids said. As if memory was a destination. No more ghost-cologne, no more memories of Duddits. No more no bounce, no more no play. He had enough on his plate already.

He threw the wood onto the fire one branch at a time, sidearming the pieces awkwardly, wincing at the pain in his knee but enjoying the way the sparks rose in a cloud, whirling beneath the lean-to’s canted tin ceiling like crazy fireflies before winking out.

Henry would be back soon. That was the thing to hold onto. Just watch the fire blaze up and hold that thought.

No, he won’t. Because things have gone wrong back at Hole in the Wall. Something to do with-

“Rick,” he said, watching the flames taste the new wood. Soon they would feed and grow tall.

He stripped off his gloves, using his teeth, and held his hands up to the warmth of the fire. The cut on the pad of his right hand, where the busted bottle had gotten him, was long and deep. Was going to leave a scar, but so what? What was a scar or two between friends? And they were friends, weren’t they? Yeah. The old Kansas Street Gang, the Crimson Pirates with their plastic swords and battery-powered Star Wars ray-guns. Once they had done something heroic-twice, if you counted the Rinkenhauer girl. They had even gotten their pictures in the paper that time, and so what if he had a few scars? And so what if they had once maybe-just maybe-killed a guy? Because if ever there was a guy who deserved killing-